Glimpses of Normalcy
by The Golden Hierophant
Summary: Three years after the quest to save the world, and after finally finding some peace in Costa del Sol with Cloud in tow; Tifa isn't happy. Fame isn't at all what it's cracked up to be, and boy, things will change if she has a say in it.
1. Ennui

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

I'd spent so much of my life wanting to be something more- someone famous, rich, beautiful, and cherished for just how unique and special I was, and when fame did come, _oh boy_ was I wrong.

You never realize what it's like to really be alive until you've almost died. When you're holding in your own lungs as you choke on smoke and ash tell me what living is like. The whole air was alive with fire, and my hands were sticky, wet, and red. Cough. Choke. Wheeze. Repeat. I shouldn't have come up here to the reactor; it was stupid. So stupid. The phrase "I shouldn't have" is the adage of my life.

But, mistakes do happen I suppose.

There was someone coming up the stairs, someone calling my name. Old cadet's boots scraped against metal; hearing was all I seemed capable of by then. Cough. Choke. Wheeze. Have you ever felt like you've had bursting balloons in your chest? Pretend those balloons were your lungs rapidly deflating as you tried holding them down, adding pressure just to keep them pumping as you struggle to breathe. All I can taste is blood. It's like having a mouthful of rust grating your gums. Now I'm dying here mind you, but god, did I have to die looking so ugly and pitiful?

As I lie there staring at _nothing_, seeing _nothing_ I can only think about how I've done _nothing_, but I was going to be…I was going to be a traveling concert pianist, a real master of the keys. Then, I was going to be a martial artist extraordinaire after my pa told me he couldn't afford any fancy education after mama died. I was going to be…

I blinked. The alarm came into view. 10:30 in the morning. It must have been blaring for at least ten minutes. I let the alarm go on for a good and long time before I turned it off half tempted to smash the damn thing. I screwed my eyes shut against the bright yellow light of day. Cloud was a few rooms over, shuffling around. Some mornings I just didn't have it in me to leave bed. The dreams, they come and go; I can spend hours thinking about them, Nibelheim, and the rough scar etched over the entire length of my front…but that was then, and this was now, Costa del Sol, a paradise complete with sand, palms, and sea.

It's been three years since anyone has needed me to play heroine, three since meteor. I count each day.

Cloud and me, we're something like celebrities here. We get special favors, and the bar we opened up in town is booming, and I mean really booming. With the money from our travels and this, we could've started playing in politics if we wanted and won being saviors of the planet and all. Pretty much anything that I wanted I could buy or get. Aren't I a success? I have everything I've ever wanted: a life beyond my backwater hometown, a name for myself, and of course Cloud, though he hadn't been a part of the plan in the beginning, but I'm _not_ happy.

Sometimes it's just like everything fell together just too easily, like my life here is something phony. I don't know what I feel like. Living here is like watching myself at the end of a boring film, and it definitely wasn't the premier blockbuster but rather some really rotten sequel that has you pissed off the moment it's over because it was just so bullshit, so unreal…so I don't know what.

Cloud knew I was awake but he didn't come in the room, not like he used to come rushing in, pulling me close like I was going to disappear. _Then_ when my nightmares still fired up his sentimentality and misplaced male chauvinism, they weren't just irritating, tiresome, and so blah. Today, he just called out a quick goodbye and left the house to go open the bar. I'm sure I'd be down there _eventually_ to help. Our house is so impersonal. It's like being in a hotel where everything is someone else's, and you're really afraid to touch anything lest some letter falls out of the sky with impossibly _polite_ wording, very _politely_ billing you out of your every last penny and _politely_ threatening to sue if you don't pay up. Yeah, our house was pretty much like that. With our complete lack of intimacy, you'd think that we hadn't been dating for the last three years, that we hadn't gotten married last month, and sometimes I wonder why we ever got married at all. It was expected, I suppose.

I always crumble to others' expectations.

I finally pull myself out of bed and stagger into the kitchen looking like some sort of monster churned out of one of Hojo's old experiments, but you wouldn't be looking exactly glamorous either after only two hours of sleep. I groggily followed my nose to the still simmering pot of coffee Cloud had left on the stove and pour myself a cup. I swished it around a few times not bothering with cream or sugar like I would've done on one of my better days. There's something almost poetic about old, burnt coffee. I watched each black velvety layer fall over and engulf the other, a long rolling darkness like my dreams should've been after that last handful of sleeping meds a few hours ago. My doctor had put up quite the argument when I asked for them telling me to try changing my point of view, to get out more, but I'm charming, rich, and famous. It doesn't take too much convincing to get an old creaky man in a patched-up lab coat to prescribe you pretty much anything when you have money.

I open the fridge next because I'm ravenous, and I mean really voracious like Wutai refugee starved. When was the last time I've eaten? Can't remember. Nothing was even in there besides those faux chocolate protein drinks that Cloud likes so much and crumbs from some unidentifiable source. More liquid breakfast then it seems. I spike the next cup of coffee with rum. Don't worry about me getting drunk this early. My tolerance is monstrous, one of my many hidden little talents.

The phone rings, and I curse. I have an almost uncanny sense for who's calling whenever I hear that damn thing ring. This time, it's Yuffie. Conversations with Yuffie in the morning titillate me. Vincent, antisocial? How novel. Of course I'm listening to you, Yuffie. No, I wouldn't rather be jumping off of a cliff. I'm not rushing you off the phone. Perhaps Vincent not wanting you might have something to do with you being such an immature little girl, but of course I didn't say that. Actually, I'm incapable voicing my opinion. I'm much too subservient to actually do something or say something I want. Your prattling on for hours is the spice of my life. There's nothing I look forward to more. Every day, I stand by the phone just for you to call. Do I have to tell you again that I'm listening? Really, I am. Trust me. Would I ever I lie to you? I slam the phone down, and it rings again. I just watch Yuffie's name blink on and off the ID screen. Oh my, what's come over me? Why am I turning away, walking towards the living room to the bookcase? Stop it, you mad woman. Go back and apologize to your friend this instant, but I won't.

What the hell brought this on?

Can't we sit down and talk it out?

Are you hyperventilating?

You disgust me.

Suddenly I'm on the couch, some book with big words in my hands. I'm stuttering and stumbling over words I don't know. Most of the books on my shelf, they're for show, some tragic little display of all the things I'll never be. Being raised an eco-terrorist after your mentor dumps you in Midgar because you're useless, shell-shocked, and battered doesn't give you time to complete high school let alone go to college. I'm smart enough to know I won't find my soul on these pages.

The phone rings again, and my sudden independence now all spent has me running to answer it, but I skid to a stop just before I pick up the receiver. Johnny Costello? There's a name I haven't seen in years.

"Hey, Tifa," how he knew it was me who answered I can't be sure. The craggy baritone doesn't jive with the image I have of some soot covered boy shaking his mother's corpse, clumsy stab wounds all the way through her body bleeding out even more as he rattles her looking like a lost child. I half expect his voice to crack, but it doesn't.

"Hey, Johnny. How have you been?" Why am I whispering? Why are my eyes suddenly wet? My knees are going weak, and I take a seat in the armchair in the entrance hall taking the phone with me because this is going to be a _long_ conversation.

"Fine, just fine," it's like he's grinning against the phone, against my ear. Oh Johnny, beautiful little Johnny, hanging onto my coattails when I strutted around being the village prima donna. You live just up the street. Really? Why is that exciting? My insides are butter. Forgive me as I ramble on like an idiot, apologizing for I don't know what. Then he says something that floors me at first, and I promptly pick up my jaw.

"Of course I'll meet you for lunch," I exhale at his invitation. Please Johnny, shake up my ennui. Tell me about your life, your ordinary, everyday life as one of time's innumerable everyday cogs in its massive invisible clock because this is one of the most exciting things to happen in months. We talk for hours then after my initial breathy awkwardness, words falling and coming together into sentences…things that have needed saying for so long like pooling rain in a cracked sidewalk. I haven't been this open with anyone outside or hell, even in Avalanche for years. We talk about Nibelheim then; I confess that I dream about it quite often, and that thick syrupy pity in his voice washes over me, making me more alive than any sleep I've gotten recently. Nothing unites two people who haven't spoken in years like a tragedy known by only a few. Most people on this planet have never even heard of Nibelheim. Nibelheim? Must be one of those backwater towns in the mountains…somewhere in the boondocks. Sorry dear, Nibelheim? Is that near Corel? Nibelheim? Oh yes, it's that spa near Gongaga; I've been there. Lovely in the spring.

"So Tifa," he really draws out of my name, "I heard you're with Cloud."

"Yeah," I mumble. Oh yes, there was something I was supposed to be doing. My husband must be absolutely swamped at the bar. Conversation falls off again, and I feel the sudden urge to ask Johnny about himself, "So how long have you've been in Costa del Sol?"

I know he's shrugging behind the phone, "Four…five years. I was in Midgar, but something brought me out here." You mean that you've been my neighbor for all these years, and I've never known?

I play at joking, "Oh my, Johnny. Midgar…and now Costa del Sol? I'd swear you're following me." He sort of half laughed and insisted that it was the other way around that I must be following him. We traded a few more witticisms and reminisced just a little about the good old days spent on the mountain trails and skipping stones across mountain creeks. My heart was constricting itself, and I felt a little moisture fall against my cheek. The last thing he gave me was the name of the restaurant, some fancy Wutaian place on the boardwalk. I'd be there.

The cuckoo whistled in the kitchen. It must have been nearly four. All this time gone and I haven't showered or even ran yet? I'm really a slob. I grabbed some clothes out of my bedroom, black shorts and a white tee or something like that, and walked into the bathroom, and it was certainly in a state…It's like Cloud is incapable of cleaning anything. I try convincing myself that I don't mind, but I can't quite stop crying, not just yet. I haven't really stopped since I talked to Johnny. Gripping each side of the sink with shaking little hands, my sighs and sobs echoed out of my throat, falling into their own little chorus, and I stared bleary-eyed in the mirror. Is that hideous creature me? Almost didn't recognize myself there for a minute. Smudged mascara and faded lipstick caress swollen red eyes and pouty lips, telltale signs of barmaid adventures from last night, serving shots, drinking shots, and mixing pina coladas and mojitos and whatever else these people like down here in the tropics. I washed my face in the sink first, and then ridded myself of that coffee-laced halitosis with a quick minty scrub.

I have to say that I love showers; there's divine about scorching water burning away your sins. It's like being baptized. There's orange and cinnamon…mhm…cinnamon. Suds in my hair, soap splashing down my back…there's no place in the world I'd rather be. I'm not even crying now because life couldn't be more perfect at the moment, because tomorrow everything is going to change.

I'm born anew…and tomorrow life is starting for real for Tifa Lockheart.


	2. A Little Wine

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_When you've parked the second car in the garage, and installed the hot tub, and skied in Colorado, and wind-surfed in the Caribbean, when you've had your first love affair and your second and your third, the question will remain, where does the dream end for me?"_

Mario Cuomo

* * *

It was just a little after two that afternoon, the day after Johnny called Tifa, and just when he thought she wasn't going to show, she'd come strolling up the boardwalk scanning crowded café and restaurant fronts for him. He stood leaning over the white stone fence of the Wutaian diner's mock pagoda and waved, catching her eye. She was like a page from his memory made real and whole right in front of him, but the lovely girl he'd remembered had filled out into full womanly curves if the sundress, the way it clung to her and its plunging neckline weren't indications enough. Her smile was subtler than he remembered too not all wide, flashing teeth like in the past; her eyes were two deep glasses of very dark red wine, faintly twinkling against the high tropical sun with some unknown internal reflection.

She sat across from him. She was unusually quiet…well quieter than he'd recalled her being and drummed her fingers against the glass table looking away from him. There was something strained in her manner, and he'd thought something was off over the phone when he was talking to her, but seeing her in person, there was something obviously not quite right with Tifa. Dark mascara masked even darker rings under her eyes, and foundation disguised hairline wrinkles and very slight crow's feet.

Johnny started the conversation admiring her ring, a gracious little gold band choked by diamond so big that it held her whole finger hostage, and she replied with quiet thanks, her tone almost dreamy like she was worlds away at the moment, and then he thought to bring her out of her shell by reminiscing about Nibelheim again, carefully glossing over the parts where Sephiroth entered and exited the story. She chimed in here and there, a dreamy yeah, of course, or no. There was something so blank and passive about this Tifa sitting in front of him as if saving the world had snuffed out all of that inner radiance; hell, stories about her had sent him halfway around the world from the slums in Midgar on a quest to discover himself and make something out of his life. He'd known when she and Cloud had come back to reclaim their villa in town; the papers had made a big fuss about their humble corner of the world being home to two of the greatest heroes ever known. He also knew the couple had gotten married in a big ceremony right on the beachfront and opened up a bar not very far from the diner where he and Tifa were sitting, but he just never had the courage to go and talk to her.

Just when he was going to ask her about Cloud, about why she hadn't brought him, the waitress came up and took their orders. He absentmindedly ordered some noodle dish, and as distracted as ever, Tifa ordered the same. The waitress left, and they were alone again in a sea of tables full of other conversations and lives being orchestrated out in the dramatic, kitschy fashion typical to Costa del Sol.

"So, Tifa," he cleared his throat, but then some admirer had run up to their table, a tanned teenage girl with sandy hair and amber eyes in a blue bikini and sarong whose eyes were entirely on Tifa wide and doe-like with obvious admiration.

"Mrs. Strife?" the girl gushed, wringing her hands in front of her.

"Hmm?" Tifa looked up at the girl, her expression slightly bored as if she were used to this.

"Could I please have your autograph?"

"Of course," Tifa produced a pen from a small clamshell pocketbook looped on her wrist and leaned over to the sign whatever little trinket the girl had produced. Her admirer's quick puffs of jittery breath accented the moment, and Tifa smiled up at her with that classic megawatt smile Johnny remembered and passed over the little memento.

"Oh thank you, Mrs. Strife, thanks," the girl ran off back to her own table, waving the autograph. An explosion of giggles erupted, and Tifa turned away from the girls, back to Johnny.

"I'm sorry about that," she murmured, looking away. Her cheeks were very slightly flushed, and she chewed her lower lip.

He chuckled softly, "You're a real celebrity now, aren't you?"

She shrugged. The waitress came then with their meals and served them, and they ate in relative silence for ten minutes before Johnny resumed the nagging interrogation, finally getting a question in about Cloud.

"So how's that husband of yours been?"

She shrugged. Strange. Johnny quirked a brow, and after a moment, she supplied kind of in that detached way a reporter gives the news that he was doing well, keeping busy at the bar, and added darkly that he was fond of all of the attention, but in the end that she was happy for him, happy that Cloud had finally found something that made him _happy_. Nothing Johnny had read or heard about the couple led him to believe that their marriage was anything less than stellar; the papers raved about them, calling the two the world's premier couple, partners in love- partners in every way imaginable, completely in sync with one another, and yada yada yada. Their wedding photo had been beautiful; he couldn't go anywhere without seeing it. The picture was on the cover of every tabloid in Gaia. Their two faces stared into each other's, her creamy veil pulled back over her chestnut hair, Cloud's hand wiping away happy tears. The sinking sun, palms, and sea stood behind them both, immortalized in print; the image had been effectively seared into Johnny's brain. No, he wasn't jealous. He'd given up that infatuation he had for Tifa years ago; it was just so surreal, so impossible to put the image of the cute teen that drank whiskey with him underneath the water tower, smoked cloves with the other kids in the mountains, and got into all sorts of country mischief with him was this demure, pretty woman in front of him, so subdued, so civilized, and so sad. There was no question though that she could probably still kick his ass, but she was so wildly different than what he'd remembered.

Her hand waving in front of his face broke Johnny out of his reverie, "Earth to Johnny… Let's talk about you. How have you've been keeping? You know I missed you. I don't know anyone else who survived besides me and Cloud," she leaned over the table, whispering. Where had that come from? That sudden burst of sentimentality reminded him of the old Tifa he knew.

"I've been keeping well enough. I'm an engineer here at the docks. It pays the bills, I suppose…was supposed to go to Junon, but who could ever leave this place? It's heaven," Johnny laughed.

"Indeed," a wry smile tugged at her lips.

A simple little lunch became a walk along the boardwalk. They'd stopped at her bar for an hour; she checked on things, her employees, and Cloud. They didn't speak, he just sort of gave a small wave at her across the room from behind the counter, and she waved back. He gave Johnny a long quizzical stare though, and then he and Tifa set off on their way again. He hadn't intended to spend the whole day with her, and he certainly hadn't intended something as innocent as a little reminiscing over wine in his apartment that night to transform into something so entirely different.

He was certain of one thing though, Tifa wasn't drunk. When they were kids, she could drink anyone in town completely under the table, and so when he felt those strong, soft hands on his shoulders, kneading away at suddenly tense muscles, it wasn't some tipsy accident.

"Today," she whispered, her breath warming his ear, "Today when you looked at me, it was like back then."

Back when? Oh. He knew, a light going off in his head, back then right after she'd bought that cowgirl costume, but she was probably talking about that second time when he'd been going out of his backdoor to the outhouse, at nearly three in the morning. She'd come out Nibelheim's inn, twisting that little leather mini skirt back into place, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles, and he just stopped and stared. She stopped too, her mouth forming a perfect little surprised circle.

"You can't tell anyone about this," his memory and she sighed huskily at the exact same moment, splitting his timeline. He was sitting in his apartment seventeen again, a businessman's wine glass in his hand, the adult Tifa's fingers playing with his collar.

"No one can know," she repeated, "But, I need this. I need you. Take me back."

Take her back where? To that night, to that moment, but that _wasn't_ him. Johnny closed his eyes and opened them in Nibelheim, blinking wildly at the girl before him.

"Tifa," his breath hitched, "Tifa is that you? What are you doing out this late?"

Her hands were on her hips, and she looked up at the window to the only suite in the town's inn.

"Does it really matter?" she grinned at him, winking, and sauntered off into the night.


	3. Wicked Little Town

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up."_

Chuck Palahniuk

* * *

I was fifteen when I lost my virginity, two days before my life as I knew it ended. _Before_ the fire, _before_ the massacre, and approximately seventy-two hours _before_ the cover-up, all the years that led up to that single moment had smoldered away into ash and lies like they'd never even been, and _before_ I saw my father's body prone and bloody on that hard metal floor, I'd come unglued then in society's coil. Sometimes I like summing up my life as nothing more than series _before,_ each long moment a breathless pause of nothingness _before _tragedy.

In the three years leading up to that day that stood apart from time, I'd divided my time between mouthing off to my pa and training with Zangan. Each day, Zangan and I would pummel away at Nibel wolves and whatever else was native to mountains honing my skill. He told me that I was his star pupil, that my training was almost complete, and that I'd travel with him abroad next month. It was the best news I'd heard in years.

I'd always done pretty well in school especially with music, but after my mother died, my pa started drinking heavily, and the bills started collecting, I knew I wouldn't be going to that fancy conservatory in Midgar. Thank god for Zangan. He started coming around the village on his travels and training me when I was twelve, back when Cloud was still around. I hadn't really taken the martial arts seriously then, but near my thirteenth birthday after Cloud went to go become some famous soldier like Sephiroth, I spent each day almost killing myself on those high peaks with Zangan. Sometimes when I sit on the beach outside our villa, I remember the sun beating down on my back and the cold mountain wind in my hair; it was as if being alive was an adrenaline rush in itself. What happened to that feeling? Hell, if I know.

It wasn't fair in the least that the village recluse had a chance to make something of himself. _I_ was the smart one, pretty and talented too. If anyone had deserved a chance to become anything famous in town, it was me. I don't know…I really went crazy with it then, building up myself to a point where I was stronger than most of the boys in town. I did anything I could to surpass Cloud. Pa wouldn't hear a word of it when I'd begged him to join SOLDIER; he'd waved it off saying only rejects and poor folk with no prospects joined. Who the hell did he think we were? If you looked in the dictionary under poor, you'd find a picture of Nibelheim, some grim little scratching of ramshackle homes tacked together with wood and mud, some place so damn primitive that we still used outhouses. Our town square wasn't even pretty and cobbled like some in the villages down south. There was no arguing with him, and that was probably the point where my wild-eyed teenage rebellion kicked in.

In a town of about sixty people, everyone knew everything about everyone else, but we kids were determined to carve out our own little space of privacy, to experiment like the kids in the big cities. I was out with Johnny and some other kids from town, sitting around one of the creeks in the mountains back before the reactor was built and when it was still safe to go up into the cliffs at night.

Me? I was wedged between Johnny and someone else, if I could remember his name, I'd tell you. My feet were bare and muddy, and I kicked back and forth in that icy creek under a sky full of stars, and there we were, all sitting around and looking like little unruly country kids off of some quaint greeting card. The stars that night were something you never saw in Costa del Sol, Midgar, or any other city on this planet, and sometimes I think that I really miss those stars, and I know I miss that night.

I must've been thirteen, almost fourteen, by then. We were passing around a bottle of whiskey, taking sips out of it and thinking aloud about our own lives which we'd barely lived. Out on the frontier, we really considered ourselves grown. I mean after all in a town that was as small as Nibelheim, your job was staked out for you by the time you hit ten.

Johnny Costello was one of the lucky ones. His folks had saved up a little mountain of cash, and he was getting the hell out of town the moment he turned sixteen for schooling in Midgar. Me, I was going to be the next mayor; it was already expected seeing as my pa was mayor and all. The job wasn't much more than a title with a paycheck, your only duties being to report the village's census whenever someone kicked the bucket or even more rarely was born and to write the occasional letter. The pay was awful; it barely kept the lights on which flickered anyway depending on how Shinra felt about supplying power that day, and it was definitely one that I didn't want. God, even the town baker was more important than the mayor in town.

A girl chimed in about taking over her mother's general store; I knew the one she was going on about, after all there was only one in town. Another kid whose name I think was Bill, between big black gobs of spit and chewing tobacco, chattered on and on about how he was going to be a farmer like his pa. I hated that kid. He was never too bright. That kid had this way about him, a certain sort of complacency and a dull look in his eyes like some sort of damn cow; it was a look I'd seen before in every other damn adult in this village, but he was the first kid I'd seen with it. Just fucking nauseating. I flashed Johnny a look. He knew exactly what I was thinking: surrounded by people like that, we knew we had to get the hell out of there.

Someone mentioned Cloud, the girl who was taking over the store maybe…I can't remember, and with another passing around of the whiskey bottle and a little gagging and choking on the strong amber liquid, our talk turned to SOLDIER. It was probably one of the first times I'd heard of Sephiroth after Cloud left dreamy eyed to go be like him; he was a specter in my life- a ghost of mine far off and removed, isolated like the big city, Shinra, and the president. All of those terms had little bearing, providing nothing more than distant paychecks which had little bearing in a town where everyone was poor. Zangan mentioned him a few times too, talking about how it was a damn shame what was going on in Wutai. Zangan was a Wutaian first and a martial artist second and quietly denounced Shinra every chance he got when we were alone up in those mountains. To hear about some Shinra man wiping out whole clans of old Wutaian families, centuries old techniques and schools of martial arts snuffed out like old, stubby candles disgusted him, and in turn disgusted me. That feeling only lasted so long.

Cloud's first letter came a week later, and he talked about how glamorous everything was in Midgar, the beauties of the SOLDIER life, and I was jealous, so bitterly jealous. I started voraciously watching the news, after having worked my body and fists to their limits then collapsing into a sweaty heap. Often, Zangan would have to carry me down the steep craggy passes only to dump me on the couch in the living room in front of the house's old black and white TV set.

I'd flick back and forth for any mention of SOLDIER on the news between the two stations we got up here in the mountains, weakly thumping the TV every time the signal dare go out. That's when I saw him- Sephiroth, dressed in his most formal of uniforms, hair pulled back beneath a black cap. Gold stars lined his shoulders signifying some rank I didn't know, and his chest was so covered in metals that he dazzled like some sort of god underneath the studio lights on the screen. So this was the man that was holding Wutai hostage? Shinra's new hero? More importantly, this was the man Cloud said he knew personally? I was breathless, dragging myself in front of the screen, pressing my face onto the glass paneling. As he walked past the camera to some sort of Shinra event, one bold reporter kept sticking out his microphone trying to get in a word with the man. Sephiroth turned ever so slightly, never really stopping, quirked a brow, and continued on his way, seemingly oblivious to the sea of reporters lunging after him like sharks on a strong wave. My SOLDIER fixation zeroed in on him, the epitome of everything I aspired to be. His image stood strong and immobile at the back of my mind every evening as I'd fall back upon hard stone, my every limb raw, busted, and bloody but incalculably stronger.

Two years passed in the blink of an eye; the reactor went up, and my pa's pay from Shinra was augmented a little. Something funny began happening up in the mountains near the reactor; at first it was only at night. People started complaining to pa about strange growls and scratching against their windows in town too, and a week later, ten men on a hiking trip in the mountains went missing, a number the size of a family gone with no explanation or anything. Even the wolves lurking around the mountainside weren't that bold to hunt men with guns, and three days after that, half starved and half crazy, a nearly dead survivor dragged himself into the village screaming about monsters unlike any he'd ever seen before. Suddenly, my pa had a job to do; the only driver in town fired up his old truck and drove him down to Rocket Town. He was back within the hour and made a call up to Midgar; Shinra's best were on their way.

In every house, in our only store, in our only bar, the only name you heard was Sephiroth, and I hung onto every rumor, every little farfetched story. Outwardly, I was indistinguishable from the other handful of teenage girls in the village who'd sit and swoon over tiny imported newspaper clippings emblazoned with his face; my obsession couldn't have been more different.

Sitting at the doorway on our dusty porch, I sat with my pa a full week before _they _arrived; watching the horizon swallow whatever was left of the sun. I would've been training, but Zangan forbade me, saying that he couldn't protect us both against these monsters. My pa and I, we hadn't spoken really for years after my mother died when I was eight; we'd always just more of talked at each other and definitely never heard each other. I remember that evening as clear as day; he wasn't staggering around drunk for once, all of whiskey sat undisturbed behind our big old wooden bar counter in the basement beneath the wooden boards under my feet. I suppose the mess in the mountains had him spooked. He was rocking back and forth in ma's old rocking chair just staring up at Mt. Nibel. Me, barely able to keep still for all the fidgety anticipation that had been building up since he delivered the news, shucked boiled eggs, tossing fragments of white shells into the grass just beyond the steps.

"You know, girl," he began, his voice always unusually light for a man of his stature, "You're like your ma. You're smart like her. I always wanted to send you to the city, but I ain't never have the money. And, that sort of place eats folks like us alive."

I dropped the egg in my hand, its shell halfway gone, and out of the corner of my eye watched it roll down the dirt road into a neighbor's yard. I turned and looked up at him, sucking in a breath like we'd never spoken before in our lives, and honestly, I couldn't remember the last time we had. My own wine colored eyes stared back at me from his face, and I whispered, "What do you mean?"

"I mean you're tough enough for Midgar, tougher than the rest of us. Hell, if you can go up there on them mountains everyday and do what you do, then by all means when these folks get here, you have my blessings to leave, girl. There ain't nothing here for you, we both know that. You ain't never really been one of us, and I ain't gonna keep you chained up here no more. No one could never pin down a tiger no way. You know I ain't never had no money like Johnny's folks, but I got a little something for you. Just come and ask," those were the most words I'd ever heard from him in my life, and though he was never ever eloquent, I was struck silent and had to look away. I don't remember if I'd started crying or not, maybe I only sniffled a little. In the end though, I think his words were all the nudging I needed.

At fifteen, after having done and seen everything that a country bumpkin could do and see and after having faced real life and death situations multiple times, I felt more like a woman than a girl with each passing second. Four days before SOLDIER arrived, I started trying to dress the part, and there's nothing more funny and tragic than a little girl trying to be sexier and more mature than what she was. I had tucked into some of my promised money early and paid a visit to the general store, scanning through rough homely dresses, pants, and shirts- clothes that sat alongside fifty year old pharmaceuticals and rusty second-hand electronics.

Nibelheim was a town of plaid and denim, clothes ugly and durable enough to last you a lifetime. You could never escape that cross stitch pattern, a tartan of stained blues and whites no matter where you went. Then a diamond amongst all that coal sprang up, a little cowgirl number, tight corseted tank, brown vest and mini skirt, hat, and boots all soft cotton and cured leather, an import from the city. I bought it and fled back to my bedroom across town to try everything on.

I fingered trail of silver buttons that stopped just above my navel, and looked at myself and for the first time felt glamorous. It was like glimpsing into some forbidden future, feeling like I was taking part in a sacred rite of passage, a part in some play in which every girl eventually became the star even if only for a fleeting moment. I reached for the last thing I had of my mother's on my vanity, a tube of deep red lipstick and rubbed it against my lips, transforming into some new creature entirely, and so it was, there sat a kid, more girl than woman, on a worn wooden stool carved with flowers, playing in her dead mother's makeup trying to make up for years of dysfunction with a waxy tube of pigmented chemicals.

Giddy. I don't think I'd ever felt that way before, but I felt giddy then looking at this beautiful woman in the mirror, this girl of high society. As I rushed down the stairs, my pa caught sight of me, shook his head, and began to say something that I didn't quite catch; I was already out of the door running over to Johnny's. He and the guys were sitting on his porch playing cards; Johnny was the dealer, and he dropped the full deck the moment he saw me. I strolled up to his front gate, grinned, and puffed out my chest, my arms clasped behind my back.

_Look at me. _

He couldn't look away, his mouth hanging open.

"Aw, shit, Johnny," one of the guys ducked beneath the table to start picking up the cards, "What the hell is wrong…" he never finished his statement, following Johnny's gaze to me. I grinned even more broadly and tipped my cap.

"Woah…you're really somethin', Tifa," that was all Johnny get out as he sheepishly ran his hands through tufts of his rusty hair. The others were just silent, and I stood there for a good and long time, them staring at me and me looking back, showcasing my newfound womanliness to the world. Then, I tipped my hat again, wiggling my hips as I sauntered away, a borrowed strut from some model I'd seen on TV.

I marked each day that'd passed on a calendar, never being sure when they'd show up. Seven days passed like water in through a sieve. On the eighth day, out of the mist on a particular rainy day in Nibelheim, four ghosts from the big city glided in on the fog, and a village in the middle of nowhere sucked in its breath and held on tight for three whole days, and that's how it was.

How it'll always be for as long as I can remember, my eyes shut tight as I lie in Johnny's bed wondering just what I've done…what I was thinking. Yet, that regret that should be eating away at me isn't there, and there's something more…something that I've been reaching out for that I can't quite grasp, but it isn't Johnny, and it certainly isn't Cloud. I think it's time…time to go back to Nibelheim.


	4. Tabloids and Plastic

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage." _

Albert Camus

* * *

Ground zero. A foreign ceiling bled into my sight as I blinked, bleary eyed, my eyes crusted over with tears and mascara. Light, far too bright for the mood, filtered in and out through his thick masculine blue curtains. Thick wood, all hard lines and angles, dominated the room. He didn't have any paintings or pottery…not even one measly cheap vase with plastic flowers. Johnny didn't have a decent sense of décor, but he hadn't had a feminine touch from my understanding either. The single relationship he had in the past since Nibelheim had fizzled out into who knows what.

I struggled to pull myself into a sitting position, but my limbs felt as heavy as Johnny's wooden bed, dead and limp, and Johnny, himself wasn't helping much either. He clung onto me as he slept, one arm slung across my breasts and the other wrapped languidly around my waist. With as much delicacy as I could muster, I unraveled myself and picked up my fallen dress. Wrinkled waves and lines of flowers sat against red silk, each rumple a testament to my marital betrayal. Hot tears were running down my face all at once. You're never really aware when you're crying until you're on your hands and knees sobbing your eyes out, well, at least that's the story with me. I eventually pulled myself together and slung my dress over my shoulder and stalked through Johnny's place looking for his bathroom, wiping my eyes free of day old mascara as I went.

At home, the bathroom was the most intimate of my rooms, one of the few places I felt at peace, but in this strange home devoured by Johnny's favored blue, I didn't feel anything except the baser needs of my all too human body. Latent pain coursed through various points along my body: a ring of bruises on my wrists, soreness in my thighs, and my ugly smudgy, swollen face. I assessed the damage in bathroom mirror. There's something incredibly humbling and offsetting about seeing your nude body in the mirror. I have nothing to be ashamed about; I'm in pristine shape, but yet there's that scar that runs from my right shoulder to my left hip, a token of the past, and I whisper my thoughts aloud unknowingly, "Nibelheim."

"What about it, gorgeous?"

I almost jump out of my skin and turn instinctively. Just Johnny. A pair of plaid flannel pants hung lowly on his hips and with hooded eyes, he leaned closer and whispered huskily, "You look beautiful, Tifa."

It's the beginning of something I'll regret, of something that I don't even want to begin, but I'd just be running much like _someone_ else I know, and Nibelheim wells up in my mind again as Johnny's lips brush against mine, our teeth knocking together awkwardly as we're both still so hung over and sluggish from the night before. _God, Tifa…how'd you get yourself into this one_?

I can hardly manage my own life, my own problems, and Nibelheim keeps popping in my cloudy mind like some unbidden dream, and it's an escape that I just can't bring myself to take because I'm too damn proud for my own good, because I'm Tifa Strife née Lockheart, and I don't run away even when it'll probably be good for me.

* * *

Out of the past three years they'd lived in Costa del Sol, since reopening the Seventh Heaven bar, Cloud hadn't missed a day at work, but that day he stood in the kitchen nearly an hour past noon pacing back and forth on the phone with his and Tifa's general practitioner. She'd never come home last night, and a series of mounting erratic behavior had been hard to ignore. She barely ate, slept, or even bothered getting up to come with him to the bar anymore.

"I am holding," Cloud spat in irritation at the robotic voice over the phone, pristine in its politeness; he'd been holding for the last ten damn minutes. Should he have called the police earlier to look for Tifa? This was a new development, sometimes when he'd come back from work late at night, she'd be gone, but she'd always come back. Was it his fault? They hadn't really sat down and talked for ages or spent a quiet night in for quite awhile. Did some punks try to rough her up? No, Tifa could take care of herself. He ran a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth from the stove to the refrigerator all while the doctor's merry little phone jingle played in his ear. He stopped short right in front of the sink, dishwater reflecting his pallid face back up to him, his eyes rimmed red- trophies of his sleepless night.

"How may I help you," the Doctor's secretary, Ms. Jen Smith, answered in her low monotonous tone, and Cloud could almost let out a silent prayer at finally getting someone remotely human on the line.

"Ms. Smith, it's me, Cloud Strife."

"Oh, Mr. Strife!" She traded the low tone for a high-pitched flirty squeal, Cloud sighed. The last thing he needed was hero worship, and he raked his hand through his hair again which was even more untidy than usual, but thankfully the rest of the conversation became quickly far more rudimentary and professional, perhaps it was his grave pitch that he should've thanked, and after three minutes of necessary legal chatter, he was speaking with their doctor.

"Dr. Jones, I've found some pills prescribed to my wife that I feel you could explain," Cloud cut to chase. What was the point of polite bullshitting anyway? He'd already spent the entire night awake, terrified, and now he was pissed. The doctor was all at once obscenely polite and panicked, his voice wobbling on the line.

"Mr. Strife, don't be alarmed at all. Normal procedure, I assure you. Your wife said she's been having some trouble sleeping, and I prescribed her medication for a very short period of time."

"Hm. She never mentioned a sleeping problem to me," but she didn't have to say a word, how many nights had Cloud spent in the last month, feeling her shift and squirm at his side while he feigned sleep.

Then the doctor grew bold, "But, I tried to talk her out of it…urged her to seek some counseling-"

Cloud nearly dropped the phone, but he'd missed the doctor's intimation, Tifa stumbled in the door, her hair tussled, still wearing her clothes from yesterday. He dropped the receiver, forgetting all about the doctor and just stared at Tifa as if he'd never seen her in his life.

* * *

Most marriages that start out on those truly fairytale foundations barely last in our era, we're too concerned with our post-Shinra stock market, PHS-lines, dream homes, and careers. Now take two people who live through a series of tragedies, the worse things you can ever imagine happening to a pair of people over and over again…until one day, it all just stops. The two people, they just sit back and wonder how did they survive? How could they possibly find someone else who could even fathom what they've just gone through, and then they turn and look at each other, and both silently decide, "Hey, you'll do."

That was Cloud and me, together and against the world. If you endured having everything you ever loved stripped from you and nearly die a few dozen times, then a thing like infidelity would be a little bump in the road, right? It was never about me sleeping with Johnny that was the beginning of the end, or even the series of contemplations leading up to yesterday night…it was the realization that I didn't love Cloud. I wasn't even sure if I liked him. That awkward little boy with whom I'd grown up had finally matured into a man I no longer recognized.

When I walked through the door, he was on the phone, presumably asking about me with my bottle of pills sitting in the middle of the coffee table, and then suddenly I really would've liked about one or five even though I'd gotten a full night of sleep. I'm not addicted…I'm just dealing with I don't know what in my own way. So let's not discuss that, because right now at this moment you could hear a pin drop in the kitchen. We stood and stared at each other like dazed cattle.

"Tifa," He mustered with an authoritative tone I hadn't heard for years, "Where were you last night?"

"Out," I replied numbly, tugging flowery fabric into place along my body. This dress. It's just too damn wrinkled, and frayed, and torn. I look like a sex crime victim, but then…Cloud knows it too. He repeated his question, but I'm too far off to even think up a lie. A few more moments of silence…then a flurry of movement and shouting, and we edge closer to each other eyes blazing with unspoken accusations. A sob cuts across the open air, a tight little strangled noise, and it's so shocking because it's me that's crying. Cloud stood nonchalant just a few inches away, his arms folded.

"Where did you go? What happened?" The steely grimace he'd worn so well is finally beginning to crumble into something more sympathetic, and this is the Cloud I remember…weak and unsure, and I cling to that memory, to that time when I could put my mind off of the past.

"Did someone hurt you, Tifa? Tell me. I'll murder the bastard," I sob all the harder, clawing at his chest for support, and his hands are on my wrist, the only support keeping me from falling, "Tell me, Tifa. You know you can tell me anything. I'll always protect you. Please just let me in," his soft crooning fades as my thoughts overpower his voice. Honestly, we don't belong together. The last thing my father ever told me before he died was to never ever settle, and that's what Cloud and I did. We settled for this dysfunctional whatever we are.

"Cloud," I murmured, my voice raspy and soft from all the crying but growing in strength with conviction, "We have to talk."

* * *

That evening, I sat on the beach alone watching the tide ebb in and out on shore. Sounds from the harbor had begun to die down, and then all that was left was the whistling wind on the sea and the occasional cry of a seagull. A big yellow sun as rich as a runny egg sat against a red sky which further off on the horizon faded into a sickly yellow. A low band of black clouds sat out on the sea, and I wondered how long I could sit out here before I went back to the house and back to Cloud. Even the ocean was devoid of solace when I needed it most. Was it selfish of me? Was it selfish to fall out of love with the planet's greatest hero? Would we get divorced? Could we remain friends? Most importantly of all…what would the press say? I didn't know if I could deal with a scandal out in public like that; staring out in the waves which grew angrier against the shore with each passing second, I wanted nothing more than the ocean to swallow me whole and steal these damning questions from my mind. Love was something you couldn't work at. It was either there or it wasn't. Cloud was attractive in many ways, but I lay beside a stranger each night when I crawled into bed.

_Nibelheim._

There it was again. The damning image of a wood smoke from an old iron stove in a wooden cottage welled up in my mind again. Old mountain paths, creeks and streams…I wondered if the trees had begun to grow back on the mountain yet. Tall firs and cedars which had stood for hundreds of years had all slumped over and died when Shinra built the reactor. No, I doubted the trees had grown back. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I stood wiping sand from my freshly washed jeans and wandered barefoot back to the main road, sandals hanging loosely from my fingertips.

Snap!

Someone had taken a picture, and I looked over to catch a slimy reporter flashing with a thumbs-up and a grin, "You're a natural, Mrs. Strife."

I smiled nastily. For just how much longer would I be Mrs. Strife? That occasion would really give him a reason to snap a picture then. I didn't go home immediately, but settled on a little café for a light dinner. I barely made eye contact with the waiter as I ordered, ignoring all of his flatteries. My hair is beautiful? Really. What a lovely shirt? Yes, that's why I bought it. All of this phoniness, I could barely stand it. I bet if I looked closely enough this salad I'd ordered was really nothing more than little pieces of colored plastic. I examined the contents of the bowl with a critical eye- artificial ranch dressing, wheat and soy substitutes for the boiled eggs and bacon bits; was anything here real? The people too were all moving mounds of plastic, all fake wide smiles and shining eyes masking jealousy and disgust.

We weren't heroes. We'd robbed these people of comfortable lives once the mako reactors had gone down and the only real military presence on the planet had been disbanded; we had to go back to using fossil fuels which were more expensive and dirty and relying on independent militias for protection which were always corrupt. It was the good old bad days all over again. Was anyone thanking us for that? In five more years when everyone had forgotten about Shinra's nastiness, I'd probably get a rock through my window. Or maybe I'd grown too cynical for my own good. Fame will do that to you.

I sipped lightly at a cup of black coffee flavored with amaretto cream and sugar to mask the bitterness; Coffee was probably the last thing I needed right now, but I needed to take my meds with something. The irony. That was probably just a waste of a pill.

On the way home, I passed a stall of tabloids. One in particular caught my eye, some atrocious libel about Vincent Valentine. I blanched in revulsion; some people really had no shame. I'm surprised it wasn't my face up there especially with my strut through town with Johnny last night. You do a little something like save the world, and suddenly your life becomes public knowledge. What you've eaten for lunch, who you're dating, how often you go to the bathroom… It's maddening. I used to envy celebrities, but now I want nothing more than to disappear back into obscurity.

I turned the knob to the front door of the villa. It was dark inside, and Cloud was obviously not around. He was probably at the bar. I made a beeline for our bed not even bothering to undress and flung myself onto the unmade sheets from where Cloud had tossed and turned all night waiting for me the day before. Staring up at all ceiling, a familiar stark white, my heart fell into my throat, and I sniffled fighting back another volley of tears. I refused to cry again; after all, life here really wasn't that terrible. It was just…some unplaced feeling of not belonging. Would my life really have gone that differently if I hadn't _met _Sephiroth all those years ago? How many was it now altogether…eight? I'm only twenty-three, and I'm in the prime of my life. Why do I feel like an old woman then?

Thunder erupts in the far distant heavens shaking the ground, and then the sound of rain comes, falling everywhere steadily and heavily- a tropical storm melding into the storm already raging in my head.

* * *

A/N: This is probably the first author's note that I've written for this story. When I began writing this particular story, I wanted to write something drastically different from what I usually see in this fandom and explore relationships in the context of how well each of the characters know each other and some of the emotional baggage which the characters must be carrying around, specifically Tifa. It always seemed to me that Tifa and Cloud weren't very close at all, especially in Nibelheim before the main storyline, and so I always thought Tifa just having feelings all of the sudden for Cloud might have been some misplaced guilt or sentiment tying to her past rather than just love at first sight after meeting each other again. This story isn't planned to be at all long, and ideally I see about four to five more chapters before it is complete. The action will pick up drastically in the next chapter.


	5. Bottoming Out

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out."_

Timothy Leary

* * *

As loud as drumming soldiers on the march to war, I was aware of every little sound in the villa as I lay on my back, flat and unable to move. The ceiling expanded and contorted into a series of shapes, and black shadows danced against the morning mottled light which rained through the palms into my room. It felt like my body was about to seize and spasm, but then all of that dreadful heaviness dissolved into air. Life was like gliding on silk, everything felt slippery and wide, my fingers loose and distended. My stomach sat somewhere near the floor, and my head soared above the ceiling, into the sky. It was like my soul was rushing from my body, and I tried steadying myself against all of that movement. From the ceiling, I watched my clumsy body still in its clothes from yesterday fall from the bed onto the floor.

Somewhere the tap was running in the house, and the noise was driving me insane. A roaring waterfall had been beating my ears senseless. I flailed, knocking the lamp on my nightstand to the floor, and my medication went flying, a volley of tablets scattered and shined like diamonds, and then all was still and silent. "I am" became inconsequential to just _being_. My life, my marriage, Nibelheim, Sephiroth, Cloud, Johnny, and all of those other little nagging issues faded into background noise like the quiet grey static on an old television set left on at night.

* * *

It never really sat well with Johnny the way Tifa had gone running off like that yesterday after they'd kissed in his bathroom. Guilt gnawed at him, and it took more than a little courage to leave his house that morning to confront Tifa and Cloud. What had happened last night couldn't ever happen again, and he started to call her, but if Cloud answered, what could he say or do? He would've spilt his guts on the line, and Tifa would have a whole new set of problems.

Sobriety was damning state of mind; he shouldn't have had a drop to drink when he was dining with another man's wife whom he'd always desired. He would have never…It was stupid to ponder over the "would have never's" now, because what was done could never be undone. Tifa and Cloud must've been really loaded, he thought as he walked up the street on the high end of Costa del Sol. He passed villa after villa, each grander and larger than the last. Big adobe style homes, wide palms and gigantic swimming pools, and maids and gardeners busy toiling away for the city's wealthy littered the street. He'd never seen such splendor. He used to think his little rented room in Midgar was something grand when he'd first left Nibelheim, but this was surely the type of place a god would live. Now that he thought about it, didn't Tifa and Cloud own old President Shinra's place?

_Their_ villa stood apart from the rest. The walkway to the front door showcased a modest little garden, something more honest than all of the others on the street- home built and maintained by its owners. Johnny could almost see Tifa on her knees pruning the roses in the front yard beneath the windows; the deep red hibiscuses and purple orchids lining the walkway each had that lovingly cared for look to them, and Johnny almost grinned despite himself. That was one ineffable trait Tifa possessed; he could never understand her capacity to feel the need to care for every, little living thing, but as he neared the door, a growing sense of wrongness swept over him. The front door stood ajar; thick tropical flies hung around the gloom and flittered in and out of the quiet house.

He should have knocked, but Johnny couldn't help himself. He pushed back the door and walked in; the house was impossibly clean. The marble floors had been scrubbed to their most pristine state, and everything was orderly like the page out of one of those magazines about homes and gardens, and he had to hand it to her- Tifa was one hell of a decorator_…among other things_, and then that nagging guilt came back tenfold with that thought. It was impossibly wrong of him to waltz right into another man's home, especially after he'd slept with his wife. He had to explain and apologize, but what in the world was he going to say?

"Cloud," he called. No response. The villa sat silent, and then that sense of something being very, very wrong about the place returned. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he paced further into the villa, closing the door behind him. Perhaps, he could find them both in the backyard or something. Neither Cloud nor Tifa had been at the bar that morning which was where he'd gone first. He had no clue where he was going and turned down one hall that appeared promising, calling for Cloud and sometimes even Tifa, and then he suddenly found himself before another slightly ajar door. The lights were on, and he heard a faint gurgling like someone drowning and fighting for air. Slowly, Johnny pushed back the door, and there on the floor, on a bed of tangled sheets, pills, and vomited blood lay Tifa. Her red, red eyes were far off and burned dully with a feverous fire.

She rasped for breath, flailing and crying weakly in pain, and Johnny stood stock still for a moment. His heart nearly leapt from his chest, and then he sprang into action, lunging for the phone and dialing the emergency number.

"I need an ambulance immediately!" he screamed onto the line.

"What's the problem, Sir," the operator replied unfretted by his panic.

"I don't know. I don't know," Johnny sputtered at her, "I think it's an overdose. You gotta send someone here quick. Shit, I don't think she's breathing."

"We're tracing the call now, Sir. The ambulance is on its way. Now first, Mr…"

"Costello," Johnny supplied, taking a frantic look at Tifa, "My name's Johnny Costello."

"Mr. Costello," The operator began in a no nonsense tone, "First, I need you to calm down. This is the residence of Cloud and Tifa Strife, correct?"

"Yes," Johnny grunted. What the hell did that have to do with anything? Right now, Tifa was lying here dying, and this woman was asking him stupid questions, "Tell me what to do. Come on. She's dying, ma'am-"

The operator cut him, "Mr. Costello, calm down. You're doing more harm than good. Now, I need you lift Tifa, I'm assuming it's her. Yes. Okay. Now lift Tifa and get her on her feet. Walk her to the living room. Trust me, Mr. Costello, this is actually doing her a lot of good. Stay on the line with me until the paramedics arrive."

Juggling the phone and attempting to get Tifa up on her feet was easier said than done. She was still unconscious, her eyes open and unseeing; Johnny put an arm around her waist, attempting to move her. He dragged her along the floor more than she walked, "Now what. I have her on her feet. She's still out of it. Now what?"

"Just keep her up and check if her airway is obstructed. The paramedics will be there in seconds."

Sure enough, within several seconds, the paramedics were at the door, and his life suddenly became a lot more complicated. He watched them hoist Tifa into the ambulance, and they asked him if he wanted to ride with them to the hospital, holding her hand should she regain consciousness. They explained that it was best for the patient to have someone familiar nearby when they finally regained consciousness out of what one paramedic snickered and called "the hole". Johnny frowned; there was nothing funny about this whole situation.

"Yeah, I have to leave a note or something for her husband," after all, Cloud of all people had a right to know where his wife was at. He dug in his pockets for anything, a scrap of paper and a pen, scribbled out a hasty, shaking message, and hopped into the ambulance, feeling guiltier than he already had been. As they rode to hospital, Johnny gripping Tifa's dead, cold hand tightly, he couldn't but ponder if this'd been a suicide attempt.

* * *

We get problems like this in the clinic all of the time. Some rich, over-privileged pig is dabbling in drugs he shouldn't be touching while he maintains this squeaky clean outside image in polite society if you know what I'm saying. You see anyone walks in to see a new general practitioner wearing enough gold and jewels is treated like royalty, and by the end of that appointment, that GP will give them anything that they're asking for. Us average joes scraping by day by day and living `til the next pay check could only wish for treatment so good. It's the same with celebs…in fact even more so for them. Now, I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but five thousand gil is one hell of a persuader. You see, Mrs. Strife was found with enough ketamine in her system to down a bull. Let's just say it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than an esuna to counteract that. No one even prescribes that as a sleeping aid, more of an antidepressant if you see what I'm saying, but can you even imagine that one of the planet's saviors is_ an addict_? Heh, looks like even gods fall from their majesty. Just goes to show you that even the boys and gals in Avalanche ain't so golden after all…

* * *

"Keep the news away from her, Mr. Strife. She can't know. It'll just distress her with the state she's in…"

Yesterday, I thought I saw the vast greenness of the Lifestream, and I felt like I was a part of it. I woke up whispering my name which I couldn't remember at first. It was like being born again in a sterile white room, and the first thing I felt was a deep, deep hunger. It was too soon to open my eyes- everything hurt and bled together in that intensely sterile whiteness. I was hooked up to an IV and started wondering what the hell happened yesterday. There was perhaps only one other time in my life where I experienced a loss of time, and that was back in Nibelheim after Sephiroth had done his best to cleave me in two. People were talking over me, about me, and I heard someone say something about the news. Was I dying from some serious illness, and did they want to keep it away from me? Death was preferable a thousand times over to the way I was feeling now. It was like someone had gone in and jumbled my intestines around, knotting them while they were at it.

No one could ever feel this way.

I tried opening my eyes again, and this time sight came easier; shapes and colors focused correctly into view. The room was larger than what I'd expected for a personal hospital room- a few potted plants dotted the window sills, little gifts from the bar regulars. I even had my own television, and I tried pulling myself into a sitting position, but someone pushed me back down. Cloud.

"You should be resting," he was noncommittal as ever.

"I," I squinted and weakly jerked away, "What happened."

He could've smirked nastily, but honestly with the way my eyes were even now, I couldn't tell, "Apparently you tried to off yourself. Those sleeping meds were a little more than what they seemed, weren't they? Hmm, Teef?"

Cloud only ever, ever called me by that name when he was angry with me; he knew I hated it, but the more alarming news was that I'd attempted suicide. No. Never! I may have been unhappy, but I was never that unhappy.

"Tch, I knew it," Cloud spat, "You just accidentally overdosed, didn't you?"

I rolled my eyes, "You have every right to hate me now, Cloud…for what I did," then I paused looking for the words in my still very foggy state of mind, "But, did you really wish that I'd died. Did you want to hear that I'd kill myself because you rode off like usual," and then I sneered, "If I ever had a reason to do myself in, then it'd be for me ever even considering marrying you. Now who found me? I know it wasn't you."

Cloud snorted, "Our good, good friend, Mr. Costello. He so diligently left me a note after he strolled in our house. Coming back for seconds, I assume. I came in here and had the staff send him packing. I was just talking with your nurse; by the evening, you'll be good to go."

"Good," I smiled softly and pulled myself up against the headboard, using what little strength I had left, "Now get the hell out."

He had the nerve to look taken aback.

"Wipe that look off of your face, Cloud, and get ready because this was a long time coming. At first, I wanted to hate and blame myself for what happened two days ago, and yeah, that's still my fault. But, you and I are finished. Keep the villa, keep the bar; I looked at my life, and I wonder why I'm miserable when everything points back to you-" he started to interrupt me.

I raised my hand to silence him, "I lived with you for three years. Here," I waved my hand around for emphasis, "I was your live-in girlfriend. I dealt with your tantrums, your little periods of going hot and cold. You outright accused me of being a wretched girlfriend and told me more than once that I'd ruined your life. All of that just because I wasn't because I wasn't Aeris? You are a real bastard, Cloud. Who can compete for a man fighting to stay in love with someone else? I loved you, cooked for you, cleaned up your messes, and I built and managed that bar from day one, and then one day, you were seemingly over it all. You swoop in and want to be the town's playboy, the local little celebrity, posing here and there. Did you ever once think that _I_ was hurting inside, did you ever once think that _I _might be in pain here? No, never occurred to you even once, did it? I know that I'm saying I and me a lot here, and that may sound selfish, but now that I think about when was the last time I'd ever done anything for myself?" and by then, I was screaming, standing on wobbling legs, dragging my IV beside me as I rounded on his shrinking form. It was like he was trying to disappear into the wall, and that made me even angrier, "No, I tried so hard. I told you not to keep it inside that we should work through this thing together, but, you, you're so determined to be so aloof and nonchalant. Then, you ask me to marry you last month and that's supposed to put a big bandage on everything. Poof, the cut's gone, and it's all better? I don't think so, Cloud."

Beneath the floors of our villa, behind that success and the outward fame, behind those big, fake smiles, and who knows what else we'd done to appear like the perfect couple in public life, an infectious wound had been festering, and it'd seemingly healed for awhile but the infection was still there- a big pustule had grown up over it, red, swollen, and irritated, and today was the day it burst. I refused to be the thing that Cloud took for granted anymore. I let go of my IV and reached for my ring finger, pulling the gold band that I'd never wanted from the finger it'd held captive for what I felt was far too long, and glared at the diamond. The stone was a deed to Cloud's ownership of me, and with all of my strength I flung it at his face.

"Now, get the hell out."

He left, and I collapsed into a crying heap. The nurses had come running in and dragged me back into bed. So much for being brave and strong…who was I kidding? They extended my stay for several days for observation and therapy, and that was how I found myself sitting across from Dr. Catherine Klein or Cat as she wanted me to call her. They'd given me a wean-off dosage of ketamine and then it was natural herbs, healthy dieting, and positive thinking to keep me healthy. What a crock of nonsense, or that's what I thought, at least at first when this therapy all started.

Cat was pretty in a very clinical way, her face all straight, clear features. Her were eyes were hazel, and her black hair was almost always up in a fancy up do whenever I saw her which I thought was strange for a doctor at first, but after a few visits, the look definitely suited her.

She was as blunt as anything, and her very first question was, "Well, Tifa, I want you to be completely honest with me. Did you try to kill yourself?"

"No," I blanched, the very thought was appalling. The martial artist in me would never allow me to die in such a way.

"I must ask why you were prescribed ketamine? Your former GP said he'd prescribed it to you as an experimental antidepressant."

I chuckled ruefully, it was just like a doctor to throw something at you rather than deal with your baggage, but Cat was different, "I was having trouble sleeping."

She saw right through that, "Surely he would've just prescribed regular sleeping medication if it were _just insomnia_. Tifa, I assure, anything said in this room-"

_This room, _I glanced at the confines of these four little walls and scoffed. Just how confidential were the nurses who'd pumped my stomach clean and filtered fluids in and out of my body. By the second day in the hospital, I'd gotten my hands on a tabloid in the lobby downstairs with my swollen face on the cover, my blood stained lips, and Johnny gripping my hand as if I'd already died. I'd read what an anonymous interviewee had said about me and shook my head.

"Doctor. Let's be serious here."

"Cat," she corrected, "Tifa, I know what you're thinking, and I want you to know that I'm not some LPN working part time here who doesn't give a damn about doctor-patient confidentiality, but you can trust me…even if you feel like you can't right now."

It always irked me when people pretended that they knew what I was going through, but maybe I'd give this honesty thing a shot, and that's how I became friends Dr. Klein. What was supposed to be a few days of therapy had expanded into a week, and I told her everything…even about me and Sephiroth and just how deep that rabbit hole ran. I expected her to stare at me in disgust and pull away, telling me to get out of her office, but there was nothing except a compassionate smile, and she took my hand.

I'd been staying in the hospital all that time at her suggestion. It was cheaper than a fancy hotel, and my insurance covered it. The food wasn't even that terrible. I made an almost full recovery physically in a day or two, and I'd taken up boxing in the hospital's gym to keep myself fit because I just wasn't up to running yet along the boardwalk surrounded by so many others' judgmental stares.

Cat was outside the gym waiting one day, watching me through the glass, and landed me with one of the strangest questions I'd ever been asked.

"Tifa, do you know what a bear is?"

"A what?" I asked, casting my glance towards her.

"A bear," she repeated.

I folded my arms and leaned my head against the glass, "Big, burly, extinct animal. It looks kind of like an overgrown dog, only fatter. I saw a drawing of one once in an old biology book at the library."

"Yeah, almost exactly like that," she laughed, and as we she started off down the hall to the cafeteria, she turned to me and said," You're a bit like a mother bear, Tifa. Don't look at me like that, a mother bear bar the fat and fur. Before I became a psychologist, I was studying to be a zoologist, and we had to be well versed in the old extinct animals. Now, bears, they're these wickedly strong creatures, but as strong they are, a mother bear will fight tooth and nail for her cubs even if it means her death."

"I don't see where this is going, Cat. I don't have any children," I interrupted, and she quickly shushed me.

"Don't ruin this analogy, Tifa, with your cynicism," she stuck out her tongue, "You make everyone that's weaker than you, your cub like Cloud and your old friends in Avalanche, but you never take the time to mother yourself. You're what we call in psychological terms- extraverted, sensing, feeling, and judging or ESFJ for short. You feel secure in stable environments, and you enjoy nurturing others to bring out the best in them, but in instability, you crumble. You're a helper and skeptic, and you might just think I'm throwing words at you, but let it sink in."

And, think I did as we walked along that sterile white hall. I let Cat order for me in the cafeteria, and she brought back two steaming heaps of that soy substitute for meat that she enjoyed so much and knew I hated. Sometimes, I think she did it irk me. She was funny like that. We ate in silence; eating had always been a really visceral activity for me, and I think she'd picked up on my discomfort over talking over food after our first few cafeteria meetings. I'd smile and talk too much to compensate for how anxious I'd feel.

After lunch, we made our way back to her office, and I sat across from her.

"So," she began," What do you think?"

"I think you're right. I've been bottling Nibelheim and Sephiroth down for so long because I couldn't deal with them, and there were always so many other problems popping up that seemed so much more urgent."

She nodded, "Now, what do you intend to do about it all?"

I looked up, "I was thinking about going back to Nibelheim, but I don't know if I'm strong enough for that."

"You know you are," she clicked her tongue, something she'd do whenever she was irritated, "What are you shying away from?" Cat strode over to her window and opened it wide, letting the warm, humid breeze waft in, "You had a rough childhood even before what happened to Nibelheim. You were the motherless daughter of an alcoholic father in a town with absolutely nothing going for it, and I hate to state it so bluntly, but it is what it is. You told me yourself that you felt you didn't have a future to look forward to enjoying. You latched onto the symbol of SOLDIER, grasping for the strength you felt that you didn't have, and attached yourself to its most iconic hero, Sephiroth. With his complete breakdown as you described, he probably saw something of himself in you- and your relationship was an unhealthy codependency from the start."

I couldn't do anything but nod, she'd stated it so plainly.

She continued on, "You can get even bitterer, or you can get better, Tifa. You have to confront your demons, and as your doctor, I'll be with you every step of the way. Now, you have to go to Nibelheim, and I would go with you, but I am needed here, but at any minute of day, and I mean _at any minute_, you can call me if you need to talk, but you really need to get the hell of out of this city for awhile. Doctor's orders," she frowned at the beach in the distance through the window, "Costa del Sol's only heaven in small doses; to live here full time with the gossip, the tabloids, and all of the damn yellow journalists skulking in every dark alleyway is something you don't need right now. Now get out and go mend."

Catherine Klein was the tough love that I'd needed all of my life. I'd always been an only child, but now it felt like I'd gained a new sister in the world.

* * *

A/N: Next chapter, the return to Nibelheim. This chapter should be up faster than this one was written and uploaded. I'd originally had an entirely different premise for this particular chapter, but I wanted to examine the whole Johnny, Cloud, and Tifa triangle further and give a deeper basis to Tifa's behaviour, and I also wanted to write about her reckless medical behaviour, and begin to give her some resolution to her issues and to start the healing process, because I didn't want to continue this story in the ranting tone it's embodied so far. Thanks for the reviews on this story that I've gotten so far, because of the nature of this story, I hadn't even expected this many reviews compared to some of my other more just adventure based stories. You guys are great! :]


	6. Ghost Stories

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_I look back on where I'm from, look at the woman I've become, and the strangest things seem suddenly routine."_

Hansel Schmidt

* * *

When we were kids, we'd sit in our secret place in the mountain and tell ghost stories. Mountain spirits, the restless souls of separated lovers, and dead mothers- that sort of thing. Johnny being the prankster he was would lean really close to one of us and wail. We'd all scream, cuss, and then laugh.

Last month, I saw a real ghost in the mountains.

In this world of grey, who played the hero or villain eventually becomes inconsequential on a long enough timeline.

I got my own place here close to that old trail. Life goes on. I try not to hold grudges, and I try to forgive, but _this_ is going to be hard.

He understands.

And just maybe, we'll be okay after all.

* * *

Tabloids, magazines, television- the media. No matter where I went, I'd never escape it. The paparazzi and journalists were lurking around every corner, and it was just damning how central gossip had become to our lives in the last few years…in the past, even I caught myself getting sucked into it. With all of this attention on myself and…the incident, it was enough to drive me crazy, but I'd been holding up.

For now.

Cid's reading material struck a chord for the unusual; he preferred some of the more sensationalist tabloids, the sort of kind you'd see about half monster, half human kids, ghosts, and urban legends…that sort of thing. I found them all piled up high in the engineering room next to an old pot of coffee of which I so desperately needed a cup. That or liquor to calm my nerves. The coffee was cold and burnt, maybe brewed yesterday and heated up again this morning, but it'd do, and then a shower…

Cid and Yuffie were the two people I'd seen the most of in the last three years. Barret was busy with rebuilding Corel and working under Reeve on the whole WRO project. So far it was working better than we could have ever hoped. Vincent had vanished without a word, but I suppose I couldn't have expected anything else from him. Maybe he'd been the smart one in this whole post-Meteor hero status that'd been thrown on us all.

For the morning as a whole there wasn't much to say. I called Cid in on a favor, and he agreed to fly me to Nibelheim. If he knew anything about what had happened to me last week, he certainly kept to himself about it.

Cloud called today, and he didn't even sound that upset over the line. I'd been in the bathroom combing through my wet hair after showering when my PHS went off, his number on the screen. I debated whether I should answer for a few seconds, and then put the phone to my ear.

He'd suggested marriage counseling, and I declined. He was asking far too much. He said something snide, and I hung up. In the past, Cloud had been so quiet that I'd often miss his softly murmured sarcasm., I was just content with him speaking to me at all when we first settled down in Costa del Sol. This sudden frankness- I don't know. It was certainly offsetting.

Ever since I'd come off ketamine, I looked and felt like shit. Cat said it was natural and that the aches, the paleness, and the jitters would subside with time. I certainly hoped they would. I finished combing through my hair, working out all of those little tangles and dressed- black leggings, green tank, comfortable walking shoes, and my signature gloves. Simple and functional. I hadn't been to Nibelheim since Shinra rebuilt it, and I wasn't sure how long I could stand being there. Something in me felt like I'd make a beeline straight for the mountains the moment my feet touched the ground. It was hard staying still in the ship. It just wasn't fast enough. I had to get to Nibelheim soon or I'd burst.

Cid's new airship, The Shera, was a work of art- all new glass paneling and automated doors. Everything was smooth and chrome and felt untouchable in contrast to old hominess of the Highwind. It probably felt that way just because I hadn't been on the ship often enough. Cid had been a busy man himself these last few years. He revolutionized Rocket Town into the main hub for aeronautical engineers and scientists; it wouldn't be long until we were all calling it Rocket City; its population had nearly tripled in size since the end of Shinra. No one on the planet wasted any time at all picking up and rebuilding.

I began to wander the expanses of the Shera and stopped in one corridor. Through the window, construction was the lay of the land. The mantra of the planet had become "build, build, build!" these last few years. I'd heard things about Nibelheim too. About a year and a half ago, it'd grown large enough to start shipping out a newspaper across the planet; Cloud and I would read it irregularly. What had been a destination for mercenaries and men who'd wanted to disappear off the radar directly after Meteor fell became quite the resort town. The planet's wealthy flocked there, building up their manors and expensive hotels replacing the town's single quaint inn. Did anything at all remain of my childhood there? I bit back bile.

My stomach lurched as the great ship began its slow descent. We ghosted the wispy clouds hovering just above the mountain tops. I traced old haunts as we neared Nibelheim or rather what was left of them. The resort had already pushed this far into view; we couldn't have been more than ten miles away from the village now. Ski lifts, ramps, and rails tore across the landscape, and dynamite blew hundred year old paths out of existence. It was the death of an age. The unconquerable mountains were at last tamed. I turned away from the scene and made my way towards the main deck where Cid would be piloting.

"Almost there," Cid called from behind the wheel. He saw me enter the room, and I went to stand near his side, "Isn't the new ship a beauty?"

"Yeah. It's so different than the Highwind…not that the old ship wasn't nice too," I answered lamely. Airships were definitely not my forte.

"Would ya believe I found all of these parts scattered around the Forgotten Capital. Reconstructed them all into this, but it's still not finished yet. Finished enough to fly though," Cid had always been so good-natured. It was hard to be glum around him, and I was so thankful that he hadn't said anything about what happened last week. I knew it was still all over the news, "Shera's been wanting you to come around to Rocket for ages."

"I know. I'm planning on it, right after I take care of some things in Nibelheim."

"What's taking you there anyway, kid?"

Cid was nothing if not curious; it was easy to forget that underneath the simple pilot exterior was an engineering genius who dabbled in just about everything. He and Cat were similar like that in many regards. I tilted my head to the side, my hair falling in my face; I brushed it away and answered him "I never wanted to go at first. I'd talk about it, but it's just one of those things that I have to do, you know?"

He grunted in reply. I could tell that he wanted to say something but thought better of it and instead pointed towards the patch of green still so far beneath the airship, "I'll set her down just on the plains outside of the village."

An attendant on the ship had packed my things for me and dropped my pack at my side, and after landing, Cid pulled me into a bear hug, "Take care of yourself, Tifa."

"You too, Cid," I flashed him one of my best smiles. He was worried, and it was my fault. I wanted to apologize but didn't. I wanted to say so many things to Cid and Shera too whenever I saw her again. In all reality, they weren't _that _much older than the rest of us in Avalanche, but in the last few years, they'd been something like surrogate parents to me. Shera had always been there when I couldn't deal with Cloud and his moods in the past, and in the last year, I'd basically cut myself off from her. I really regret that.

As I left the Shera, slinging my pack over my shoulder, Cid waved from the deck until I couldn't see him any longer. The Nibel Plains had been unusually quiet on the way to the village. Well, village was an understatement. I couldn't even call Nibelheim a town now…it was a fully fledged city and construction was showing no signs of halting anytime soon. Since when had the roads been paved? It was a soul-sucking sort of feeling. I wasn't sure what was worse…the lie that Shinra had built over Nibelheim's blackened ashes or this living beast of winding streets and avenues and wandering tourists underneath the setting sun.

"Hey lady," someone shouted from an alleyway. I looked over; they must've been talking to me. It was a little boy standing near a street stall, "You wanna buy a map. You look lost."

The irony. The only real daughter of Nibelheim in this whole damn place, and _I_ was the one lost.

"Yeah, I'll take one," I dug in my pockets for the change and shoved it over for the little fold-out map. I'd reserved a room already by phone but I didn't quite feel like checking in. It wasn't night yet, and maybe there was time left to trek in the mountains. I traced my feet to a path leading to a place which they called Old Town. Old Town led to the heart of the city…town…or whatever Nibelheim had become these days. The waves of tourists in ski gear had tapered off significantly as I neared a familiar locale: that all too memorable ring of houses, the inn, general store, water tower, and the Shinra Mansion or so I'd wished. There came that feeling again- my heart and soul being evacuated through my every orifice.

Everything changed. Old dirt lanes had become those fancy cobbled paths that I'd always wanted in my childhood. The general store which Shinra had reconstructed so carefully, beam by beam and brick by brick was replaced by a new convenience store, and the Shinra Mansion was marked for destruction to be replaced by…I peered closer at the sign nailed to the rusted fence- to be replaced by a luxury spa.

Most of the houses had been bulldozed under once the charade was no longer necessary to maintain and were replaced with larger, more modern homes. And the water tower? Gone. I walked closer to the center of the square and remembered just how the water would slosh out of the occasional hole and how my father or some other man in the village would be up there hammering away all day, patching it up. I wanted those days back, but what stood there now took my breath away. From the distance, the delicately worked stone had been hard to make out. _Me?_ They'd carved me out of stone and Cloud too…facing in opposite directions with me pointing forwards towards the mountains and him pointing out of Old Town towards the plains and the sea with his sword. Our faces were grim and noble like an old tragic painting, and there was something engraved into the stone beneath our feet: _To the heroes who'd sacrificed again and again for the sake of a world in which we could all live and breathe freely. To our heroes of Nibelheim- Tifa and Cloud. May we never forget their sacrifices._

A twister could've passed through Nibelheim right now, and I wouldn't have budged a single inch. A lump welled up in my throat and I wiped my already stinging eyes. Everything about Nibelheim had become so artificial; the village as I knew it died eight years ago, but this, this was genuine. It was so hard to cope with the lost when I lived in Midgar, knowing that no one else would ever know this place's story. It went beyond my personal tragedy and Cloud's. Sephiroth massacred an entire town, and Shinra imprisoned its memory for so long. I leant against the cold stone and openly wept. Cat told me to stop running, and this was me, standing still and mourning the loss which had never healed and most likely never would, but I finally stopped running from my own hurts. I must've been there for twenty minutes or so, feeling drained and looking worse than ever before. As I hugged the stone, through the crook of the stone Cloud's arm, I saw my house, unchanged on the exterior except for what appeared to be a second addition onto the frame of the house in the back. So many feelings swept through my body as I walked over to my old house or rather the one Shinra had built in its place.

I saw myself running through the door over to Johnny's to meet the others. We'd laugh, play, and go up to the mountains nearly every day. Why had I ever wanted to leave all of this? I was such a stupid kid back then. I wanted to go right up to my front door to fling myself on a bed that was no longer mine because in the end of it all- that wasn't my house. Whatever was left of the home where I'd grown up now fertilized the lawn.

When I first came here three years ago with Avalanche on the chase for Sephiroth, Shinra staffed the house with a father and his daughter. He was acting mayor then, and gave some crummy, stuttering explanation about having lived here all of his life with his daughter. One look from me silenced him, but that seemed like such a long time ago. I wondered if the same people were living there…in _that_ house. It was too late to knock, and I was sure they hadn't forgotten me; after the damage, I was sure they wouldn't for a very, very long time.

Forgive me, but sometimes even I think I'm allowed to fly off of the handle.

Shamelessly, I traipsed through the wildflowers that'd grown up underneath the window and peered in. I felt like a nighttime prowler, creepy and unwanted. I stood on the tips of my toes, looking through the cracks between the curtains. Someone altered the décor significantly and thrown out much of the furniture with which Shinra had restocked the house in a poor effort to emulate mine. I gasped…out of the corner of my eye and then into full view, Vincent entered the living room.

My life is stranger than going to the movies nowadays, and I just roll along with the punches. After everything I've seen in life, if a UFO came down from the sky and abducted me at this very moment, I wouldn't feel too shocked. My breath fogged the window, and I leant closer bumping the glass with the bridge of my nose and accidentally tapped it.

_Smooth. _

Keen as ever the old gunslinger suddenly looked up towards the window; I ducked. The last thing I wanted was to get a bullet through my skull or to be caught looking…well like this. I wasn't sure which of the two was worse. I leapt to my feet just outside of the window's range of sight and dusted myself off.

Vincent opened the door and glanced out. My blood ran cold, and I blushed madly.

"Tifa," he deadpanned. If he were surprised to see me at all, I'd never know. He motioned towards me, "Come in."

I followed him and looked around. Vincent had repainted all of the walls a stark white. There were no pictures hanging up, just simple wooden furniture and one large couch.

"I suppose I owe you an apology," he began and pointed towards big brown couch to sit.

I sat and waved my hand, "What for? I was the one looking through your window. I should be the one apologizing here," those words coming out of my mouth, if only I could've disappeared right then and there.

He didn't say anything and then looked thoughtful for a moment before offering, "Tea?"

I nodded and followed him into the kitchen. Leaning against the wall, I watched him work, boiling water and sifting through the cupboards for tea and sugar.

Never looking up, he asked in that muted way that was uniquely Vincent, "What brings you back here?"

"Unfinished business," I answered without thinking, "I can't keep avoiding this place forever."

He paused for moment and looked at me, "Ah. So what are your plans?"

This was the most talkative Vincent had ever been in the past, and I folded my arms to think, "I hadn't thought about it. I only just really arrived. I've been walking around a bit, looking at the place. It's hardly the same. How do you live here with all of the tourists?"

He shrugged, "I work in the mountains as an exterminator at night. I never see them. It was a deal worked out with the new mayor. There are others, but I work alone."

"I've been thinking about going to mountains myself."

He put the kettle on the boil and turned around to really look at me. His eyes narrowed, "Planning on skiing?"

It was like a cool breeze blew into the room. I wasn't sure what I'd said to put him on edge, but he was hanging onto my every word, "No," I bobbed up and down on my feet, "I was planning on taking the old path up to the reactor."

"You wouldn't want to go up there."

"Why?"

Vincent walked across the room and opened another cupboard to grab two cups, two saucers, and a tray, "It isn't safe. Even the resort workers didn't develop over there. I work that area of mountain. With the reactor no longer functioning, mako's been bubbling up and mutating a few of the monsters along the way every now and then."

I shrugged, "It was like that before they built the reactor anyway…mako's always been close to the surface around there. I can handle myself. I have enough mastered materia on me to take on just about anything. When do you leave for mountain? Maybe…"

"No," he shook his head suddenly, "I apologize, but I prefer to go alone."

As he carried the tea back to the living room, I followed and sat across from him quietly, thinking. This level of standoffishness was atypical even for Vincent, but then again I really hadn't seen him since Avalanche disbanded.

"Is anything wrong?" I murmured, blowing over the hot cup. The aromatic herbs were enticing, pulling in and digging at my senses. I could sit there for hours and inhale that deep citrusy aroma.

"No," Vincent turned away. He'd seemingly returned to his quiet self. I decided to drop it. Could he have seen me on the news…I wasn't sure if that story would've played here in Nibelheim, but it was pretty likely. The village had grown large enough. I wondered if I made him uncomfortable. A thousand questions flooded my mind as I sat there with Vincent. Suddenly, I was curious about what brought him to Nibelheim. At our yearly reunions, he was never there, and it'd been nearly impossible to get a hold of the man. If it weren't for Yuffie and her insistence on endearing herself to him, he could've died and we wouldn't have known. Why hadn't Yuffie told me he had been living in Nibelheim…in my old house?

"Vincent," I looked up from the dark, swirling liquid steaming in my cup and tried to catch his eyes, "Why are you here in Nibelheim?"

He gave me the faintest of wry smiles, "I intended to return to my coffin to sleep, but Shinra Mansion is beyond dilapidated. It was easier just to buy this house, and they needed someone willing to go up in the mountains and keep the village safe."

I drank down the rest of my tea in silence, and Vincent led me back towards the new parts of town, to my hotel, and informed me that he'd soon be going out on his shift.

He leaned against a wooden pillar beneath lodge's balcony and said his goodbyes, "If you need to find me, you know where I'll be." _The house, that house…my house._

I watched his form sweep off into the darkness back to Old Town and towards the trail. I could take care of myself, and it wouldn't be following him if I were to ghost along the trail leading up to the reactor. I hadn't liked venturing out in the dark, but I had to see that reactor tonight. Then, I could call Cat, talk about it, and hopefully sleep without dreaming of _back then_.

Checking in was more arduous than I would've liked. The man behind the counter recognized me and told me something about my staying here being such an honor and so on and so forth. I was able to get away after five minutes with only signing an autograph. I quickly found my room. It was clean and simple; the window was a single long pane which gave a terrific view of the ski slopes. Little forms weaved down the mountain- skiers still out this late. I changed clothes for something more appropriate to late autumn in Nibelheim. The cold could be treacherous at night on the mountains if you weren't careful, and I wasn't bargaining for hypothermia so early in my trip. I started to call Cat but instead checked all of the messages that'd collected on my PHS- Johnny, Yuffie, Cloud, and a few others from Costa del Sol.

I wanted to avoid life for awhile longer. The nagging pull of finalizing my divorce could wait, and then there was work. Running the Seventh Heaven in Midgar was a necessity, but reopening it in Costa del Sol was a mistake. I was sick of having a job I hated, but I also needed a roof over my head and food to eat. Cloud would probably end up selling the house anyway. I could always go to the WRO, and Reeve would've been glad to have me on his team. Well, maybe not so much…because what happened last week would be a public relations nightmare if he hired me right now. Reeve was above that though. I mean if he worked aside women like Scarlet, then he would've been glad to have me. No, I'm not trying to convince myself of that. Well…maybe I am.

I worry too much sometimes.

I shook my head and brought myself back to the task at hand. The reactor. It was now or never. If I lay in bed and thought about it all night, rolling and turning, I would never be able to get up and go there tomorrow. I found myself back in Old Town again in no time at all, staring up at the familiar path. I had stood in that very spot eight years ago, so full of dreams. I remember barely being able to stand still between Zack and Sephiroth for the photograph. We had to do the shot over twice; I kept fidgeting and throwing looks at Sephiroth. It was hard to walk by that spot, but somehow I managed.

The mountain air was mako rich as the acrid odor hit my nostrils in the breeze. Imagine smelling the most powerful chemical fertilizer in existence mixed with every plant you can think of, _that's_ what mako smells like. Wind whipped up my hair, and I glanced wide and around. Grass and shrubs littered what'd once been only windblown dust and barren soil. Give it another decade or so and there'd be trees. Did shutting down the reactor for three years bring all of this life back to the mountains? It was like then, when I was a still kid barely out of diapers. Flowers sprawled out almost as far as the eye could see. It wasn't there yet, but it was getting there. I couldn't help but smile.

Everyone I'd ever known in this town died, but life was coming back. I was starting to feel at peace and wistfully nostalgic until this downright eerie chill ran along my spine. I cleared my mind and allowed my senses to take over. Something had been tailing me. I glanced around as I journeyed along the pass, but whatever it was left as soon as I reached the clearing and the bridge. It'd been rebuilt and looked stronger than ever, but the way it swayed in the wind had my heart racing. One step at a time, my feet padded softly over the wood swiftly and carefully. I couldn't help but recall how it snapped and how I tumbled so far below.

Heh, silly thought, Tifa. Don't think about things like that.

After making it to the other side, I stopped for a moment to let out the breath that I hadn't known I was holding. I slumped down against a wall of sheer rock and peered up into the heavens. Nibelheim used to be really dark at night, real country dark, and you could see a countless number of stars. The infrastructural overload had seen to that; I could see maybe five major constellations at the most. A big half-moon sat in the sky, waxy and yellow. I wanted to sit there and reminisce, but I'd come here for a reason. Trepidation ate a hole in my stomach, and I became increasingly aware that I'd scarcely eaten all day bar tea with Vincent and coffee on the Shera. I definitely didn't feel like eating now.

The quick route to the reactor was only a ten minute walk. It was odd that nothing attacked me yet. Vincent must've been good at his job. I kept my fist around my mastered fire materia just in case. You could never be too prepared. With each step, the smell of mako grew stronger until it was nearly singeing my nostrils. The grass grew thicker, healthier- fertilized by the planet's lifeblood, and up came a shaft of light through the thin past. I broke into the clearing, and there stood the reactor overtaken by vines. I didn't know what I was expecting. To see a ruin maybe, but that would be silly. It'd only been three years after all since it went into disuse. The emergency lighting was still even working, though it was significantly dimmer than it'd probably been when the reactor was first shut down.

My hands were shaking as I walked up the rail into the reactor; the door wasn't barred or locked, but why would it be? No one had entered this building since its deactivation. So many thoughts, so many memories, and none of them were good. I remembered when the trees had died, and we had to start importing our crops because they failed on the plains just outside of Nibelheim. All this for the convenience that easy electricity brought? Ha.

The mako had risen significantly underneath the bridge which connected the two platforms in the entranceway in the reactor, and the smell was so strong that I could practically taste it. This room, I hated it. The familiar valves, rusted metal, the wide chamber with its pipes that'd once siphoned off the lifestream- everything was wrong about this room. I wanted to race across the room and destroy everything in sight; I'd never wanted to see this place again but here I stood. I paced across the bridge and turned to face the area on the floor where my father had lain and died- butchered for just asking why Sephiroth set the village ablaze. I often asked that myself too. The betrayal had stung so deeply and it still did even after all that I'd learned about him. Jenova. Lucrecia. Hojo. What did these names even mean? What did any of this mean? The senseless violence, the absolute destruction, our ruined lives. Jenova could go to Hell. I'd never have my life back.

So often, I wanted to wake believing that everything had been one long dream. The blood stain on the smooth metal floor had been scrubbed clean a long, long time ago. This was last place I'd ever seen my father. I let it wash over me like an ocean wave on the beach at Costa del Sol. Where was that reluctant acceptance and peace that coming here promised? I only felt numb.

"I'm sorry," I didn't even know I'd spoken aloud until I heard myself, but I didn't stop there, "Maybe it's better this way that you couldn't see what I've become…who I am today." It wasn't better, and whispering that was a waste of breath. Still, there was no comfort or release; I wanted to call Cat and tell her how much of a bad idea this was. I just wanted to be put somewhere and looked after where I could take medication powerful enough to never be aware of anything again.

I peered over the edge of the rail peering into the depths of the lifestream below. My reputation was ruined; it wouldn't hurt. Dissolving was freedom. Heh, what a silly fleeting thought. I wouldn't give the media the satisfaction of making their allegations truth. Something thudded in the distance, a metallic noise in the other chamber which pulled me away from my dark thoughts. That sinking feeling in my gut returned- the feeling of being watched. Nothing followed me into the reactor; I stared wide and around. Everything was coming from that chamber- the noise grew louder. Feet against metal…scraping boots? No, I wouldn't be stupid enough to call out; I pulled the fire materia from my pocket once more.

The old conversion pods were dark, and I glanced around. It was dimmer in here, but I could make out a rough cot near the side of the room and strode over to it. Someone was living here?

"Wait, Tifa!" Vincent shouted as he burst into the reactor.

"Vincent?" I turned. He'd only just gotten here, but we weren't alone.

"Just turn around and go back to Nibelheim."

"What's going on here," I demanded. There was more beyond the cot: pots and pans, some old food containers, and newspapers. I looked around at the place. It had all of the fixings of a camp. I folded my arms, "Vincent?"

He sighed, staring past me, and I followed his gaze to the top of the stair. There Sephiroth stood, and I thought I'd outgrown ghost stories.


	7. A Tattered Sofa

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"_Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future."_

Fulton Oursler

* * *

It seemed nowadays, no matter where you went everyone wanted to discuss Sephiroth. Immediately after meteor fell, all you read in the papers were detailed accounts of Sephiroth popping up all over the planet like a phantom. Whenever the World Regenesis Organization sent out a team to investigate, there was never any credence to these tall tales, and so we all turned our backs on them. There of course were the rarer, second strain stories circulating around the world, the stories of who Sephiroth was as a man before he went insane- tales of his SOLDIER valor, his incredible strength, and his personal, more _intimate _life. Even after everything he'd done to destroy me, I couldn't help but feed my obsession and bought as many tabloids as possible about him. Cloud called it morbid; I called it closure. Liars' stories were more easily picked apart, but they did in the end make for much more sensationalist little reads, and after all who is even concerned about truth these days? After all, aren't these polite fictions always preferable to ugly reality? Yeah. Right.

* * *

I needed a break from my "pilgrimage", because healing was the furthest thought from my mind. I wanted to pummel _his_ face into the ground each time I saw him. My fists would be cracked and red with his blood running down my knuckles and calluses, hot like red salvation, and over the month, the long, long month in Nibelheim, I nearly wore a hole in my cheek from chewing it. Sometimes, you have to trade one addictive habit for another to keep your cool, and it made me sick that all my worst memories were just his long bad dream, something barely remembered. Who can honestly be sincere and apologize for sins they don't even remember committing?

Costa del Sol hadn't changed without me, and for one stupid minute, I had the gull to imagine that it had. People would look every now and then, pointing, whispering, and snapping photos- all of those touristy sorts of things that still pissed me off. I wasn't someone's goddamn museum exhibit. There goes Tifa Lockheart. Quick, take a picture! Snap! The world goes white for a moment, and then there were the floaters passing over my eyes as I shielded myself from some offending camera.

It really was Lockheart again; I'd adopted my maiden name because the divorce was just a hair's breath away from finalized, and there was court. Court and even more photos. Court and photos and dozens of annoying reporters wanting to pull you aside for just a minute's comment. As if I could spill out the sad fiction of my life in just one minute; so I just walked by, content to be taken as the ice queen the papers painted me as these days. It was funny how the media could turn on you in an instant. The headline in the Soleil Herald was that I was unraveling fast, spiraling down, down, down. That sweet, sweet man, my once husband, tried saving me, but I was too far gone to be saved by anyone, especially him.

Bah.

Cloud hadn't spared a minute to get his words into print. Here was the attention he'd craved at last, but who am I to criticize? Sometimes, I can be the biggest damn hypocrite. Could I fault Cloud for being himself rather than the Cloud _he'd_ always thought he was during our Avalanche days?

Sephiroth would always let himself in when he was least expected and mostly unwanted.

_Mostly._

He'd come around usually when Yuffie was visiting Vincent. I hated those days. Everything you think you know about Sephiroth is about to be turned on its side and utterly destroyed. He must've known that I didn't want him coming around because he was all the more obstinate, all the more insistent, and I couldn't fault him, because I hated myself for being unable to remain hating him. You can't apologize for your own nightmares.

"Coffee," I offered without turning around. I knew he was here. I always knew when he was here. He pulled back a chair as lightly as possible without scuffing the cheap black and white tile of my kitchen floor. My dingy, ugly house in Old Town. I could've afforded better, but I didn't want to move. He didn't answer me, so I poured him a cup anyway. _How long are you going to hang around here, hanging over me?_ That was what I wanted to say, but that would've been rude. He couldn't even fathom why I disliked him. After all, eight years ago was still only three months to him, and it was three months and several days since we'd been _together_. Bile rose up in my throat. Oh the stupid things you'll do when you're a hormonal confused kid.

After a month of staying here, I quickly picked up that eloquence wasn't Sephiroth's strong point, and couple that with the complete absence of empathy, undue arrogance, and just a general lack of tactfulness, you'd have a teenage Cloud. It would've been cute in its own way if it weren't Sephiroth we were talking about. To keep coming around here he must've been socially starved. That or _masochistic_.

I knew the world must still be ending in these Post-Shinra days when your worst enemy could become your sort of friend.

"Spar?" He inquired hopefully, looking over his cup at the back of my head.

He is such a kid in so many ways that it's sort of sad watching him to know that he is so skilled in some pursuits but so unknowledgeable at the same time. Just what sort of childhood did he have? Maybe we could sit down and talk about it one day when we were beyond single sentences with monosyllable words.

_In your dreams. _That's what I wanted to say, but instead, "Later," comes out.

A window opens, and my curtains flutter. I turn around, he's gone, his coffee cup still steaming, untouched.

Costa del Sol's exactly the same, the sun, the palms, and the sea. Everyone's still running around in their bikinis and swim trunks playing volleyball or clubbing at beach side bars. Everyone's still partying. The snooty rich crowd visits their little upscale cafes scattered around the upside of town. The sun's beating down on my back, and there's no promise of rain, only that beachside air, heaving salt and seaweed into my lungs. You breathe in. You breathe out. Everything's waiting for you just like you left it.

I'm on the upside of town with those CEO dads, socialite moms, and businesswomen in their black pencil skirts and tight, crisp suit jackets, passing old haunts looking for one café in specific, some place with a name like Chez Ciel et Mer, and there's Cat. She looked different without her lab coat, somehow less clinical if that were possible.

Her hazel eyes caught mine, and she motioned for me to sit. So I did, across from her underneath the giant blue beach parasol and watched the waves roll in and out of shore. Seagulls crying in the distance, I divided my attention between listening to her and them. It was so damning to be here again.

"So how's the divorce coming along," she asked, her head held up in one hand, leaning to the side, the way someone leans when they want share a moment with you, to express their understanding.

"It's coming along." I shrugged, and it was, but that neither here nor there. I just ooze cynicism. I almost expected her to slap my wrist with the way she looked at me, but I just wanted the whole thing to be over. We divided our finances today, into two separate WRO bank accounts.

She changed the topic, "And Nibelheim, how was that?"

"I really don't want to talk about it."

Or rather I couldn't talk about it. I really, really couldn't because she wouldn't have liked what I was going to say. The last thing anyone would want to hear was that Sephiroth was still alive, that he'd never really died in the first place. As close as I felt to Cat one month and one week ago as I sat before her at her little prim desk pouring out my soul, no one, even her could handle a secret like this.

A sigh escaped her lips, "You know, Tifa, this isn't really going to work if you aren't willing to talk about it. This sort of healing is a process that will work only if you want it to work. You've lost weight, and you have dark circles underneath your eyes. Have you been sleeping properly?"

"No," I said, "No, I haven't been sleeping well at all recently. Are you sure there isn't something you can just give me short-term?"

"And have results like last time? No way," Cat snorted and then grew very solemn, "Look at you. You're almost twenty-four years old, and physically, you're in peak condition, Tifa. You know who we prescribe drugs to at the hospital? Usually, people with chemical imbalances in their brains and genetic abnormalities, mako victims, the injured and disabled- people who live lives beyond the point where just talking about the issue could resolve it. All of these predispositions to mental illness warrant drug treatment, but I'd be a bad doctor if I were to say that you didn't fit into any of these categories or that you didn't need medication without you being tested first, but before we get to that, I won't let you run away that easily. I will exhaust every other form of therapy first, and I want you to want that too," and I could tell she meant it by the martial gleam in her eyes.

She asked me if I thought I was one of those people, and I had to shake my head no. It was embarrassing to be stripped so bare. She was right though; ketamine had just been another form of escape.

"What happens now?"

"You decide."

"Okay," I rasped and closed my eyes against the blinding sun beyond the horizon at her back.

I swallowed, the thick green taste of mako coating my nostrils and throat. It was everywhere in this place, and it made me sick ever having stepped foot in here. My diaphragm was threatening to close in on itself.

"Breathe in. Breathe out. Take deep, even breaths." Someone was speaking above me, beyond me. The dim lighting came into view, and I scraped against already rusting iron. The reactor isn't a ruin, but it's going to be with all of this unfiltered mako bubbling up through the manmade cracks in the mountain.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It's like a new mantra. The thick velvet baritone washed over me, and I wasn't even aware of anyone speaking now. My throat was closing up, constricting itself. My neck's veins were turning red and then blue from the lack of oxygen, and they bulged out something hideous. My hands were around my own throat for a moment before they dropped to my side as someone attempted to lift me up into the air. The lights filtered in and out. Dim. Corrugated steel, blistered underneath my fingers as I scraped the floor. Or were my fingers blistering?

_Get off of me, _is an unspoken phrase that comes to mind.

Vincent is a lunatic too, and I was wrong to come here up to the mountains. He's been harboring him…taking care of him. A million possibilities raced through my mind, and I have to get up and run.

"Tifa. I'd rather not have to do that again. Just listen this time. Please, listen before you do anything else rash. Esuna."

A warm light washed over my eyes, warming my body and spreading throughout.

"Breathe in. Breathe out. Steady now, Tifa," that voice, it was so familiar, and it made my skin crawl.

I looked down at my hands, at the teetering china grasped in my grip before I realized they were shaking. I placed the teacup back on its saucer before looking up at Cat, folded my hands in my lap, and asked, "Do you know the names of all of the members of Avalanche?"

She nodded and scrunched her eyebrows up in confusion. Of course she'd know their names; we were after all extremely famous.

"Even Vincent Valentine?" I whispered.

Yes. She nodded again. In the immediacy of the fallout three years ago, Vincent had been unfortunate enough to have his photo taken here or there.

"I saw him in Nibelheim, living in my old house. Well, would you believe he's a father? Experimentation always was a nasty bit of business in the old Shinra days. He looks barely older than you or me, but trust me, he's actually somewhere around sixty."

Don't give me that look. _Trust me_, I'm not crazy. At least I think I'm not, and no, I'm certainly not jealous of his newfound fatherhood. What's that even supposed to mean? I don't know.

"You're talking in circles, Tifa."

"I know," I assure her, because all of this is crazy. So let's go back to beginning.

"Vincent Valentine," I repeat, choosing to give her the brief version of the story, "Was a former Turk assigned to guard an important Shinra scientist's wife. The scientist's name was Hojo and his wife, Lucrecia. She was pregnant with a child who even in her womb was subject to her evil fuck of husband's twisted experiments. This child was Sephiroth. At the time, Vincent lied about Sephiroth's paternity. I mean, who wouldn't deny him? And at the time, we were on a mission to kill the man…So it all makes sense in the end."

I let her draw the conclusions for herself, and her immaculately red doctor's mouth formed a perfect little circle in surprise. Her manicured nails, her little fancy up do of glossy healthy black hair, the prim, cleanness of her daywear, Cat was much too together and sane to hear this. She waited for me to continue, and I waited for a reply. When there was none, I just decided to wrap things up and leave it simple for both of us. I'd still call; I'd even show up in town every now and then for an appointment, but tell her the whole truth? Never.

"I've been staying in Nibelheim ever since then; it's good to be away from this place and the tabloids. Except for that little shocker, everything's been as clear as the sky."

I'm a liar, and she fucking knows it.

"Sephiroth is _your _son?" I managed to wheeze out between choking gasps for air. I'm on all fours, panting onto the ground, staring at the steel toes of Vincent's dirty hiking boots because the betrayal is too fresh and raw for me to look into his eyes.

"Yes," that muted little reply. Was that seriously all he had to say?

"Yes?" I echoed dumbly and jumped to my feet. My hands ached to stretch their way around Sephiroth's neck and strangle him. Up from the top of the stairs in front of the chamber still with "Jenova" carved immaculately above it, his angel's face stared back down at me. His turquoise eyes and cat's pupils narrowed.

"And, you didn't tell us? He could still be insane and hell-bent on killing us all. How do you know he isn't? Damn it, Vincent. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you under some sort of spell?"

Vincent's hand and his golden gauntlet shook my shoulders, "Look at him, Tifa. Does he look crazy to you? Calm down. I'm sorry, but I can't let you kill him. Not my son. It's the least I owe to Lucrecia."

I swatted his dirty hands off my body and landed one right hook in his jaw. Boxing in the hospital paid off. I'd learnt some new tricks. He hit the ground almost instantly, "I don't give a damn about your Lucrecia. This man killed everyone. _Everyone_ that I've ever loved here," Me included in that massacre, but mine was more of a psychological death.

"He was under Jenova's control. She…that thing's dead now," Vincent spat between big, thick gobs of blood and pushed himself back to his feet, "Tifa, if you don't calm down, I'll have to immobilize you."

Vincent wouldn't dare. He pushed his way in front of me to block me from my target, and I reached for the materia in my pockets only to see it's all gone. That bastard. Okay, we can play this game because I know where it ends especially after insulting Vincent's _Lucrecia_. Death, and I've been waiting too long for that sweet release. What am I even living for after all?

"Tifa," Vincent had his hand on mine and tugged it, "Come on. Let's go back down Nibelheim. We can talk this out in the morning."

Well, this was certainly a turn of events.

"A trip as enlightening and as clear as the sky, Tifa?" Catherine Klein deadpanned.

"Yeah. It was just like that. I'm only in town for this appointment or whatever and to clear up what I want out of the villa. After that, I'm going back to Nibelheim," because that's how it worked when you knew too much. So these people could go on living their comfortably ignorant lives, clubbing, shopping, and eating along the boardwalk, I had to move away. I wouldn't even be able to look Cloud in the eye if I saw him. Johnny, either.

I stood up from the table, looking down at my half eaten teacake and drained teacup. Soggy tea leaves swam in the remnants of dark wisps of liquid. In that dainty blue and gold cup, I saw high peaked cliffs and immediately felt guilt's gut stabbing sting. I picked up the bill on the table lying beneath the delicate china on the lacey tablecloth, "I suppose I'll be paying for this since you're not charging me for this appointment," and I leave my money on the table and walk away to Costa del Sol's distant residential district, to look one last time at the villa where I lived for the last three years.

Sephiroth's in my dingy little house in Nibelheim as I drag my old little tattered sofa from the house I shared with Cloud inside the doorway. Thank God, the man in the moving van had already driven away back to the new side of Nibelheim.

"You have to stop sneaking in like this," I berated him. From the way things are moved around here and there throughout the house, he must've been crashing here for the last few days. He jumped up from whatever he'd been doing seated on the floor to help with the sofa. The red and grey plaid clashed with everything in the house, but it had a history to it, and I loved the damn thing. When we'd journeyed into the ruins of Midgar two years ago where the WRO was still trying to reconstruct the city into something new and habitable, I'd stumbled into the burnt out remains of my old bar. The sofa, though a little singed, was mostly intact, and I brought it back with me. It was the first I could afford after opening the Seventh Heaven, and so it stayed with me like a chip on my shoulder, following me around from place to place. Cloud being his spiteful, asinine self that the divorce had turned him into towards me, decided to slash up one of the cushions, and now it was a big feathery mess.

Sephiroth made a face at it, "Why don't you just throw it out? It's trash."

"Shut up," I muttered, good-naturedly for once towards him, "And, just keep pulling it into the living room before anyone sees you. Why do you keep sneaking into my house anyway? You should know I hate you."

His chest heaved a heavy sigh, "I know, but I am sorry. I regret every minute of every day for each life I've taken or ruined, and above all, I apologize for ruining _yours_."

My jaw closed with a snap, the witty retort dying on my tongue. Well, he shut me up, and before I thought about how rehearsed he sounded, I was thrown off by the sudden show of eloquence and thoughtfulness on his behalf. Three weeks ago, he'd just shrug and say that he was every bit as much a victim too in this whole thing.

The sofa scuffed along the floor, leaving treads in the carpet. He was doing most of the work at this point, and I just pointed where I wanted it, in the center of the empty living room. The walls were so bare and such a stark white that the room would be blinding at noon; each wall was a sponge ready to reabsorb my own personality, my own house. Wasn't what I dreamt of for years? No. Well, it would be now. Feathers fluttered throughout the air, caught in the midday sun, and bits of fluff stuck up between the jagged tears in the red and grey sofa's lining.

"You should really just throw it out."

Thanks Sephiroth, you can leave now. My lips broke into a slight grin, and I shook my head. It was pointless telling him to go now after I let him stay so long in the first place. Yuffie must've been over at Vincent's again.

"No," I hear myself say, "I can fix it. Reupholster it, put on new legs, and make it work."

He snorted.

Then, I turned and looked at him, standing in my doorway where if someone just peered into the glass portal at the top of the rusty green door, maybe the mailman or someone like that, he'd be seen, but I don't think he really cares. There's something really rather wretched hanging over Sephiroth, and though he tries to hide it with aloofness and nonchalance, I can really catch a glimpse of him every now and then. I suppose the reason that I didn't throw him out on his ass or try to kill him again when he first came down here a month ago after I bought my house, was because it'd be like kicking someone's little muddy abandoned dog. The motivation to hurt someone so lonely eyed just sort of dies in you once you see them.

I pouted, "I guess I'll have to go shopping again. I hope you had the dignity to leave a grocery list or something," the damn bum was always clearing out my refrigerator like it just magically filled itself, and as I waded into the other room to just put some distance between him and myself before it drove me mad, I said, "Next time let the apology come naturally, then I'll be more inclined to believe you and accept it."

_I know you're sorry_. What I want to say always gurgles up and snuffs out, because it's still _that hard _to forgive him and move on with life. I'm too afraid of what I'll lose if I do something silly like that.


	8. Look In The Mirror

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

"'_The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.' Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere. "_

_Rant, _Chuck Palahniuk

* * *

Have you ever heard the urban legend about looking into a mirror and seeing a ghost or some nonsense after saying a certain word or phrase? Yes? Well, here's what's even worse. You get up in the middle of the night, half driven mad by some unknown panic, some almost paranoia. You march to the bathroom, the tiles cold underneath your bare feet. Almost falling, you catch the sink, gripping either side with a white-knuckled fear that you can't explain. The dryness of your mouth now unbearable, you trace your sandpaper tongue over parched lips, and then tentatively raise your head inch by painful inch and gaze into the mirror.

There is no ghost, only you.

There's only you and your heart shaped face, half hidden by your own dark, stringy hair, and that's what frightens you most of all because you can't look away from the thing you've become, and you can't help but remember the person you used to be. The real ghost is you, a bad imitation of yourself.

Just look at those dead, glassy eyes, and tell me that I'm lying.

* * *

I ran a cloth under the tap and dabbed at my eyes just to keep from seeing myself after I got in from a long night on the mountains. After spending who knows how many long minutes scrubbing the blood and dust from my gloves, body, and boots, this was where the day always went downhill. It was Sunday, and that meant a day to myself in the house. I never hunted on Sunday nights because that was when Vincent worked with Sephiroth.

Father-son bonding time couldn't have been spent more strangely. I'm pretty sure now that it was the only way the two could stand being around each other. Vincent looked at Sephiroth and just saw another reminder of Lucrecia, another failure on his part. When Sephiroth looked at Vincent…well who the hell knows?

The mayor had hastily worked out the same deal with me that he had with Vincent a week after I officially resettled here, and to say the least about it, being an exterminator paid the bills, and that was all. It was really sort of unfulfilling, but it kept my mind off of _things_. The somewhat unhealthy thrill of mortal danger tends to work small miracles like that.

It sometime after five in the morning, and the sun wasn't up yet over the mountains. The house sat quietly in the way where you could hear an occasional beam creak or groan downstairs in the distance against the symphony of crickets outside, and one by one these noises faded into the background until I could hear only my own beating heart. A pin could've dropped, and it would've clanged like a church bell. If you told me that I was on edge, you wouldn't have been too far off. In the two months or so that I'd been living here, I learned to listen for every little noise echoing somewhere in the deep recesses of my house. Wind against the basement or kitchen windows might not have been just wind_._

Sunday was usually a lonely day. I hadn't made an effort to get to know my neighbors or anyone on the new side of Nibelheim. They were all mainly tourists over there, but resident or tourist, I could tell they thought that I was crazy or at the very least, extremely disturbed with the whole divorce and the incident, and they left me alone. It was a godsend of sorts- to be left alone. I hadn't known this sort of anonymity since I first moved to Midgar, and that felt like _centuries_ ago.

Sunday gave me time to think about yesterday night. Vincent came the same time as always to get me, and waiting on him, I slotted my materia, picking through the most useful of my supply. Sometime after ten, there was a light knock at the door, and I opened it. Vincent. The light almost seemed to flit away from his tall form; he stooped in my doorway asking if I was ready. I nodded and followed him along the trail into the mountains.

It'd been that way the whole two months in the Nibelheim. We fought alongside each other in silence, and only ever nodded if we saw each other during the day. I often felt that after confessing Sephiroth's true paternity to me, Vincent felt he didn't know how to approach me anymore, and I certainly didn't know how to talk to him now. It wasn't like we'd ever been great friends anyhow, but it still hurt in a way that he could keep something like this from us for so long.

I could hardly look at him, but on the mountains, fighting for your life simplified everything, and that became monotonous eventually too. Maybe that was how Vincent had felt for months, and I just shook up the status quo for awhile with my sudden arrival. He and Sephiroth worked on opposite sides of the reactor when I worked with Vincent which was everyday now except Sunday. Sephiroth hunted along the impassable trails where even I would've had a difficult time finding my footing let alone fighting. Sometimes, we'd come across him when we'd push far enough into the mountains that night, trailing some stray Nibel wolf pack. Well, those meetings were always extremely awkward.

Then, Vincent had to go and complicate the hell out of things last night as we walked along the bend in the ridge below the old reactor where the shadow of an overhanging cliff had us in almost absolute darkness. After exterminating some of the usual local vermin, I found a small clearing, and we rested among the brush. He passed over a canteen full of fresh, clean water, and I took a deep drink and looked away into what little I could see of the sky.

_I used to imagine that the twinkling stars were a million city lights. _

"Tifa," he said suddenly.

He was so damn hard to ignore because he spoke so rarely, and I couldn't help but give him my full attention, "Yes?"

"I wanted to thank you for not telling Yuffie about Sephiroth."

I waved him off and smirked wryly, "Well it's as much my secret as yours now, I guess. She'd never forgive either of us."

"I suppose you're right," he retorted dryly, and he grew even more somber, his face half hidden by the dark, "Tifa, what's going on between you and Sephiroth? It can't just be_ nothing_…because while he's accepted me, we almost never talk."

If only I could've choked in that instant, but in a way, I suppose I have to eventually come to terms with this all, and just maybe, I can move on from there and reassume living.

"Well, you're still the very much the Turk you were," I played at joking just to stall for a little longer.

Vincent wasn't in a playful mood, "I've seen him climbing in your kitchen window. He used to never take risks like that; he's never even been to my house, Tifa."

My house, you mean. Whatever.

It seemed that everyone wanted to know more about my turbulent but overall short-lived sex life. Oh, the things people are concerned about nowadays. Dr. Klein studied it from that narrow psychological scope, and she'd tell me how this and that linked to certain areas of childhood, and damn her if she wasn't right. I hadn't received enough hugs as a child, and without a motherly hand in my teenage life, I overcompensated when it came to affection big time. I was also full of pent up frustration and ambition, but we won't go into that. These are things that I prefer to forget because all that psychobabble left me feeling uncomfortable and bare.

The paparazzi rushed after me with the divorce's initial breaking news. They'd tracked down poor Johnny, and his face was in the big papers and magazines for nearly a week. I'll never forget how horrified he looked. He'd thrown a hand over his eyes as if that would hide him away completely from the flashing lights. He called me at his wit's end, screaming that he was moving to Junon away from it all. He told me that he never wanted to see me again, that I'd ruined his life.

Every word was like a sword stabbing me through my chest, reopening my old scar over and over again, and it didn't stop there. Johnny always had one hell of a temper, and he would come around in time. Maybe…

My list of friends just kept growing smaller and smaller.

Here's a tidbit of advice. Stay in your day jobs, enjoy your bland TV dinners, your less-than-perfect loves, and take as many walks in the park as you possibly can- those ordinary things you can never really enjoy when you're me. Never become famous; if you do, bridges burn themselves. Goodbye childhood friends and goodbye peace. Welcome to a life where the walls of your house might as well be made of glass. The best you can hope for after crossing that line, is to seclude yourself into a sort of hermitage only to have your oddest acquaintance ask about your not-really relationship with your worst enemy. Sorry, _former_ worst enemy.

Sometimes, I still forget.

I sighed and sucked in a deep breath. Dawn couldn't come soon enough, when I could crash onto my too firm mattress beyond the point of exhaustion, the sort of tired where you can't even dream, and let the darkness seize my body.

Vincent began to look impatient, tapping his golden gauntlet against the ground beneath him.

"Tifa," his voice was low, full of warning and menace.

Just be patient. This is hard for me too, you know, but of course he doesn't know. No one knows except for me and Sephiroth, and I'm even sure to what extent he remembers. Only, _he_ has that lingering fascination with me that I even I can't understand, but as these things do, this begins with a story that started and abruptly ended eight years ago. I'd start from the beginning and go over the whole thing, but you already know the bulk of it, and I neither want to bore you, nor do I really want to talk about it.

First though, I want to dispel any notions of silly teenage romance that some of you might expect from such a story, and I know Vincent has a tough enough shell not to be too rattled about what I'm going to say. After all, Sephiroth is his illegitimate son. He's no stranger to _scandal_. When he went back to Midgar, to his life as the world's hero, he didn't promise to steal me out of the village late at night on the last day of the mission. We didn't even promise to write to each other after that night. It was just one of those things that happen as plain, as unromantic, and as everyday as ordering takeout.

I began thinking about the way Nibelheim used to be, before the pretty cobbled stone paths and streets, before street lights, and when the only car in the whole village was a rusty old truck. The Shinra mansion was still a sight of old country grandeur, a big manor left on a forgotten farmland, but the crops had long since slumped over and died. Nibelheim was a place where once you got old enough, you tried to get the hell out of the town as soon as possible. I think I've said all of this before, but just picture a big, old dusty nowhere, years behind the rest of the world, and you'll get my point.

Really, Nibelheim was dying long before Sephiroth had set fire to it. It was a town of the old and the young. The old escaped, succumbing to sickness and age, and those of us too poor to ever dream of anything else which was the category I'd fallen into were stuck here in this nowhere hell.

Shinra killed Nibelheim the day, they built that reactor; no, they killed it when that manor first went up, with that laboratory that weaved on for what seemed to be miles unknowingly beneath all of our feet. In a moonless sky where only starlight lit Nibelheim, it was deep into autumn, nearly winter, and I was halfway to sixteen when they arrived. We'd been complaining of monsters for months from the reactor, and there'd been blackouts. On its last leg for life, Nibelheim had become a cold, dour place to live. The monster attacks cast a gloomy atmosphere over everything, and I couldn't train. Life without training seemed meaningless.

In two weeks, Johnny and a slew of other kids would be leaving for the city, and Cloud was living his dream in Midgar. There would only be me left here, training for who knows what reason since Pa assured me that I'd never see Midgar, and I'd never join SOLDIER.

In the state of mind that my glory years were at an end, I opened my window and crawled down the gutter to the dirt road below. I was such an itty bitty thing then; I doubt that I could repeat that feat now and not end up dragging that metal piping down with me. I don't know why, but I changed out of my gown into that cowgirl getup that I'd bought a little while back.

Ha, the strange things that fuel your life with meaning.

That cowgirl outfit would hold all of the adventures that I'd never have, and when I was in my thirties, a drunken "mayor" like Pa, I'd hang it on my wall with pride and tell my own kids about my wild country adventures as a teen. My glory years lived out on the mountains. It'd be just like an old movie. Back then, I could've resigned myself into accepting what life would hand to me, but it's a saying in Nibelheim that when you go walking about on country lanes, you never know who you might meet along the way.

I dodged the water tower for the plains just outside of Nibelheim, nowhere near the mountain mind you. Even, I wasn't that stupid, no matter how much faith I had in those fists of mine at that point. Just a short stint on the plains, and I'd sit in the dust, undisturbed. With men from SOLDIER in the village, you can bet your lucky stars that every kid was still awake in the village, probably out wandering like me.

To tell you the truth, sometimes, I couldn't stand being the village's perpetual belle of the ball. Sometimes I wanted to be left alone like Cloud, the perpetual outsider. We were honestly very similar, both practically born into single parent homes which were always strapped for cash. We were both ambitious, but where he was shy, I became outgoing. Sometimes, I think he sent me letters to spite me for all those years that I'd overlooked him. Honestly, I hadn't meant to do that. Kids will be kids, and he was on my mind a lot after he left.

I just couldn't fathom how a kid like Cloud made it to the big city while I got left behind.

In the dust, just outside of the village where the plains grew thick, healthy grass maybe just a mile or two more away from village, stood Sephiroth. He turned almost instantly, seeing me stand there in the dust and quirked a brow.

I looked away down towards my feet because I knew exactly what it looked like, but honestly, and I mean this more than I've meant everything in my entire life, I didn't follow him out there. If I'd known he was there, I would've stayed in my house that night, and maybe, just maybe I would've been together enough eight years later to play the celebrity game and live out a more or less stable life with Cloud. You resign yourself to certain fates when the road only travels one way, and my road had suddenly forked.

Another tidbit of advice. You know the saying about the road seldom taken? Yes? No? Well, when you come to that fork in the road, just for me, run down the path trodden by thousands, hell, millions of other people. Some journeys just aren't worth the ride.

Me looking at him, him looking at me, it was a sort of stand-off. It was almost sort of ironic that I was dressed up like a cowgirl. My boots even had spurs. I took a few steps closer to him, unable to speak; my tongue was practically cemented to roof of my throat. Even breathing was hard; I could've suffocated on air, I was so nervous. The only sound was the jingle, jingle of the spurs on my boots, and I stopped short just in front of him.

Just like people voraciously read tabloids about me today, I read the same way about him, about my solemn, noble hero that I'd hoped to emulate in life, but heroes didn't have that trapped sort of look on their faces like caged animals. Heroes didn't look like someone's museum exhibit.

Looking at Sephiroth in that instant was like looking in a mirror. I knew that look, it was what drove me from my house that night onto the plain. He looked so worn down, defeated, and on edge like someone's old chocobo. He sighed, and in his own way gave me a look that screamed,_ not again_.

It was the look that I gave so many boardwalk tourists in Costa del Sol, the look that I gave bar regulars who'd overstayed their welcome. If you ever saw someone so broken down, it'd break your heart. It was the way I felt that night, trapped in a life, on a path that I'd never be able to change. Only…I did.

_Me and my need to fix things._

When will I ever learn to be completely callous?

There's a rational explanation for everything. So close to the mountains, he must've felt the call of Jenova, and if it was as Vincent said that the monster was all to blame for _everything_, then I was lucky enough to walk away unscathed from the mansion at all later on in the night.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from his; I couldn't crawl back into my window, to my rose-tinted world of fairytales and knights in shining armor. As a kid, you're asked to believe in some pretty impossible shit. Your parents reward you believing in things like the Tooth Fairy, only making you all the more complacent with the status quo; they throw all this junk at you and never properly prepare you for the moment your mother may suddenly die or your father becomes an alcoholic. They never tell you your dreams might just roll over and die, that you'll most likely become one of the world's roving nobodies living out your twenty seconds under the sun. They never tell you that your heroes are every bit as miserable as you, that they're every bit as fragile as you.

That shattering glass sound is your innocence decaying, drying up like a wilted Nibel lily.

Sephiroth probably looked at our dusty, little country lives, watching from his inn window during the day, while an early snow made the mountain's trails impassible for just a few extra days extending the village's life for a few more moments under the sun. He saw our little circle of friends and was probably jealous on top of the mounting paranoia and insanity. After all, Genesis and Angeal were both gone, missing in action so said the tabloids; we all knew they were dead.

I threw my arms around him, and he stiffened instantly. You could tell that neither was he used to someone touching him if not to spar or fight to the death nor did he immediately like it.

I needed this one thing in my life to be the way I wanted it. I could go on living as long as he remained a distant almost god rather than this real, tangible person in front of me.

_This imperfect, fallible man._

I could accept the fact that someday, I'd lay down my training and become mayor of this windblown, cold hellhole, that'd I gain weight, lose my looks, get old, and marry another village nobody so long as he remained the way he looked on the screen.

He didn't push me away, and for some reason I wasn't too surprised. Clinging to him for real didn't mean that he reciprocated at all at first, and then his hand fell awkwardly on my back, and I glanced up. I wasn't looking at him; I saw the city lights glistening in the sky, growing larger and larger as I stood on the tips of my toes. My breath heated the air and misted against his lips. His heart thudded in sync with mine, and before I was aware of what I was doing, my lips were on his.

It was a desperate sort of thing. The last ditch effort you make to escape the world, believing that some passion-fuelled oblivion will just swallow the both of you up like a mountain trout does a pair of sick, old flies.

I was dragging him towards Shinra's old mansion, and Sephiroth let me drag him. If you ask Johnny, he'll tell you he saw me coming from the inn, hours later. Tell him for me, that he's wrong. The old stale, musty smell of rotten wood and mold was anything but romantic. The mansion was cold, the way the mountains were cold, and everything leaked. There were stray nails to snag your arms and legs against. The place had to be crawling with disease.

I dragged him up that creaky, old flight of stairs, praying that we didn't fall through into the basement or somewhere worse. The big, stained glass window was destroyed, whatever angelic scene that'd been there was painted over with crude, misspelled filth. Like, I said, anything but romantic. In a little off to the side room, there was a stained mattress on the floor, and I tried not to picture the bugs that must've been crawling in the dark on top of it.

I pushed him down on it, and he let me.

For the first time that night, he spoke, "Who are you?"

I shook my head as I settled my weight on top of him, "I don't know. You tell me."

That was how my relationship or whatever you wanted to call it with Sephiroth began and ended only after several day's worth of furtive touches and glances. Dr. Klein called it an unhealthy codependency. I called it escape.

Behind the musty, damp odor of the old manor, I could already smell the smoke of a building fire.

"Is that what you wanted to know, Vincent?" I whispered, chewing the side of mouth, really mauling it.

He sighed and grunted, "Just like Lucrecia."

_I'll bet. _So did that mean one day, I'd evolve into a big brooding, sometimes monster and sleep in a coffin? As long as I have blood running in my veins, I hope not.

"You should talk to him, Tifa," Vincent said suddenly, "He doesn't understand. Underneath all of that baggage, he has the same needs and impulses we all do, but he needs help."

_Don't we all? _You're not asking me to play Dr. Klein are you? Country smarts and a little extra book reading didn't make a psychiatrist.

"Who can I help?" I asked bitterly. After all, everything and anyone that I ever touched, I screwed up.

He smiled slightly, "You helped me, Tifa. You help everyone you meet. Aren't you up for one last rodeo?"

I spat blood and massaged my raw cheek from the outside; I wanted to say no but all that came out was, "I'll try, Vincent, I'll try."

Sunday morning, sometime after six, I unscrewed my bathroom mirror and tossed it out of the second story window. Lights came on, and I could already hear my neighbors cussing and opening their doors to peer out onto the street to see what the commotion was about. Instead of going to my room to catch what little sleep I could, I dressed for a cold day, thick, warm skiing pants and jacket and set out for a familiar reactor.

* * *

A/N: The inconsistencies with the third chapter and Tifa's story to Vincent are here for a reason. The next chapter will clear this up. :]


	9. Interim

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

_"I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself." _

_Walter Anderson_

_

* * *

_

Through his dining room window, Vincent watched Tifa leave her house early that morning; he would've thought that she was sleeping at this hour. The morning was quiet, not at all unusual for Nibelheim in late autumn. Dusty winds roved over the lonely landscape, tingeing the predawn purple skies an almost red. Everything was still dark, dreaming, even the sounds of tourists and shows had long since been extinguished out of the new areas of the town. During this morning when Vincent would usually be ascending his stairs for bed until work that night, he reflected over a glass of brandy.

Who in the end of this mess would be held accountable for Sephiroth, for Tifa, and for Cloud? There were so many things that'd gone astray in the world that he could do nothing to fix lest he work a miracle. Of only one thing was Vincent certain, no longer could he live his life in Lucrecia's memory. Today, he'd do something drastic.

* * *

They'd always kept an eye on Cloud during the hunt for Sephiroth. That seemed like years ago to Vincent. It was the sensible course of action. After all Cloud was the damaged one. Voices that none of the others heard frequently incapacitated him, and with that distraction it never even occurred to Vincent to study Tifa as well. He'd always thought that she was the strongest out of all of them, resilient in every way imaginable. She was quick to smile and quicker to laugh even in the bleakest times three years ago.

The red sky hung enormous above their heads as they all stood on the deck of the Highwind. Cloud had just given Sephiroth the black materia, and the Lifestream devoured his body perhaps dissolving it into nothing. Even then, she was defiant after Shinra imprisoned them in Junon. He saw her there at the edge of the deck just after their escape onto the Highwind. Her teeth were gleaming as she laughed into the sky even though Meteor hung over them all ready to fall at any moment. Out of all of them, she refused to be conquered. Perhaps that was the very moment when he should've noticed that she was cracked. It'd been in their faces all along, but with the world ending who really even cared anymore? After all, aren't fatalism and heroism just words mere millimeters apart in meaning?

Back then Vincent couldn't see the strain in her easy smiles or the hollowness behind the sparkle in her eyes. Everyone knew Tifa's story or as she recounted it. They knew of her happy childhood in Nibelheim and that her father tucked away money for her to leave that village to make her way into the world. Did the rest of Avalanche know that story was a lie? And, how much of what she told him last night was true? Tifa was every bit as fractured as Cloud, and he wasn't sure how to mend the situation. He didn't want to mend her; people hadn't been Vincent's forte for so many years. He came back to Nibelheim because it was only place he had left…ironic as that may seem. The Shinra Mansion and all of its secrets hidden behind mold covered walls, beneath rotten beams, and inside dusty drawers. Everything that he knew and remembered stood two paces apart in the mansion's basement, a coffin and that damn library.

Really what did he have after all?

Lucrecia was gone. His family died a long time ago. And friends? What friends did he ever have? Those he hadn't left behind in his ambition to be one of Shinra's best, betrayed him. He never allowed himself to get too close to the others in Avalanche, and when he came back here, he did what only a remnant of a man could do. Remember.

He traced the hollows of the mountain paths, and when the weather was too formidable and bitter which was often in the high peaks that the resort workers left untouched, he roamed the corridors beneath the town in the mansion, reading Hojo's notes and records, praying that he'd find a scrap of anything that once belonged to his beloved Lucrecia, and how dreadfully successful he was.

In the mansion, everything stank of rotten wood and mildew. The library was no different. He didn't know how often he'd come back there to read that fleeting journal entry and _the document _again and again. Each time he read over her journal, his heart nearly stopped. He let loose the breath he hadn't known he was holding and folded over the pages once more, staring down at the elegant loop of her handwriting with a certain sort of reverence that he hadn't felt in a long time beneath the anger. Their affair birthed the world's greatest monster. All at once, he felt an incalculable pride that Sephiroth had been his son and not Hojo's, but then there was the earth shattering guilt. Everything that'd happened in the last thirteen years, the Wutai War, the Nibelheim Massacre, Midgar, Junon, Meteor…happened because he couldn't control himself or recognize the madness hidden beneath Lucrecia's scientific ambitions.

He knew insanity when he saw it.

How would he ever be able to face the others again? He wouldn't. He severed all contact with the rest of Avalanche, although Yuffie remained persistent to…how would she phrase it… "bring him out of his shell". She had no idea.

On an unusually fierce winter night, a year after Meteor fell, Vincent looped around the path back to the reactor. The wind and ice blinded him, painting the world a whirling white against the nearly black sky. His fingers remained taut and rigid as he fingered the Death Penalty, and he listened for even the faintest of noises against the blasting wind. Nothing could be prowling at night in this weather, but every now and then a stray wolf would surprise him. If he didn't find shelter soon, he wasn't sure if he'd be in any shape to fight anything at all.

A low moan ghosted over the ridge. Vincent scanned as far as he could see. Even with heightened senses, he saw nothing. Chaos had been unusually tame these last few months. He stopped in snow and strained to hear the noise once more. A dying animal perhaps? It wasn't unusual for him to find a dragon hatchling in the mountains, its glossy green wings frozen to the snow. Nibel dragons had been of a dying breed ever since mercenaries were paid to prowl the mountains. Then the moan echoed across the mountaintop again, stronger this time and definitely much more human. His eyes widened. Was it coming from the reactor? He set out at a frantic pace, jogging atop the snow. The voice could've belonged to anything…anyone. A lost tourist that may be freezing to death or injured…or a mutated experiment finally awakening. Either possibility wasn't good. He hadn't dare enter the old reactor since he arrived back in Nibelheim.

The reactor was just another reminder of his shortcomings. Sephiroth's insanity could've been avoided completely, or so he'd hoped if he'd just…just emerged from his coffin when he sensed a foreign presence in the old manor's basement. He let his thoughts trail away on the icy winds as he trudged through the thick snows to the stairs leading up to the reactor's main entrance. The acrid, corrosive of smell of mako welled up despite the wind, and he almost turned back, but the voice moaned again over the winds. Whoever…or whatever was making that racket sounded near death but mobile. Vincent checked over his materia quickly.

He slunk along the stair, hiding in what little shadows the reactor's mako eaten beams afforded. The emergency lighting was dim in the late night gloom, dimmer than he remembered on his last trip along this particular path in the mountains. A couple of dragon hatchlings had mutated immensely and were more than a little trouble for him and a few hired mercenaries that night. He hoped it wasn't more of the same. Calling on as much of Chaos' power he dare muster without losing control, he focused all of his senses on the thing in the reactor. Past the bridge, in the main room where Hojo had carried out more of his sick human experiments lay…No. It was impossible!

_He was dead. _

All Vincent knew was red, as he dropped his gun hearing it fall heavily on the bridge nearly into the chasm below. His gauntlet felt stifling, and claws had already burst through his gloved hand, the ghosting promise of wings growing along his spine threatened to rip through his skin. The agony of the transformation pulled him to a halt just before he reached the experimentation chamber and sent him to his knees. He caught himself with his hands and spat blood, as internal organs shrank, reformed, and grew anew.

For the first time that night he spoke, "Chaos," a choked whisper, a plea, a half sob. Animalistic instinct full of bloodlust and rage fought to overtake his rational, human mind. He watched, horrified and transfixed, by the roving muscle tissue bubbling and growing underneath his skin, an alien presence ingrained into his every cell.

Then, a whisper against his ear sent him into a stark mad panic, "We will annihilate him."

A vision of red carnage, limbs, and flesh strewn about the metal chamber pulsed into his mind and reinvented itself a million times over as the demon fought him.

"Chaos!" he screamed the name into the chill, mako rich air which only helped to fuel his bloodlust when he inhaled and retched.

_Wait! _The rationalist pled for dominance. All of those months living in Tifa's "house" and ghosting into the manor at night reading over both Lucrecia's and Hojo's work gave birth to a strange sort of sympathy. He knew what it meant to be controlled by a beast beyond human understanding, and at some point Vincent thought he understood Jenova's nature too.

"We will question him. He deserves a chance. If he is truly guilty then we will execute him. Please," Vincent pled, pulling out long strands of his own dark hair as his fingers shifted rapidly between doglike claws and raw flesh.

The demon at the back of his mind let out a bark of cruel, mocking laughter, "Pathetic. So much potential and yet so weak," and as its voice faded becoming fainter and fainter until it was less than a murmur at the back of Vincent's mind, it whispered dreamily, "One day, Valentine, you will submit."

Panting and free of the other's ephemeral invasion, he vomited blood as the rest of his organs shifted back into place. Vincent shuddered violently, pushing himself to his knees to look across the room. Shivering, frail, and nude, Sephiroth lay in a viscous pool of mako on the cold metal floor. If Vincent were a more poetic man, he would've pondered for a moment longer how much like a newborn Sephiroth seemed on that floor, but instead he swallowed and shuddered in disgust too tempted to empty the contents of his stomach.

"You are my son," Vincent murmured for the first time, daring to speak the truth aloud.

The other man moaned weakly. His hands and fingertips were stained red and streaked with deep cuts as if he'd climbed a very, very long way, and he had; Vincent's eyes followed the long trail of condensed mako from the deep green chasm back in the bridge room.

It was impossible, unthinkable…that Sephiroth had crawled who knew how long from the lifestream to the planet's surface and to here of all places! Yet hadn't they all seen the man return from the dead before? Why was now any more surprising than before? Vincent approached the man shakily, still weakened from his battle with Chaos, and grabbed a fistful of Sephiroth's long locks, pulling the man's face none too gently towards his.

Sephiroth moaned again, coughed, and sputtered as if trying to speak. A searing pool of mako dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and burned its way down his chin, but it was the look in his eyes- that all too pitiful, human look of a man defeated which struck Vincent silent. This was not the man he fought in the Northern Crater last year. There would be a time for answers, but right now all he could do was to towel off the green liquid doing its damndest to eat away his former enemy's skin and clean his wounds, which were many.

* * *

Drinking brandy did nothing to dull his senses or calm his nerves. It'd been years since he could really feel the effects of alcohol, and that was another lifetime ago. It'd been underneath Vincent's nose the entire time since Tifa arrived back in Nibelheim, looking as thin and shaken and frail as Sephiroth had two years ago in the reactor. Was it really that unthinkable that a SOLDIER deployed on a mission would have a tryst with a local girl? Of course not, he chuckled wryly, but this was Sephiroth and Tifa. Everything he'd gathered from his companions, from what people said and had written about Sephiroth, and he'd even learned of the man himself during the three years since Meteor, Sephiroth like he was an often incalculably cold man and professional to a fault, but hadn't he had an affair with Lucrecia?

But Tifa? He had no idea what she was like a teenager, and he certainly couldn't confess to know her well at all even now. Outwardly, he always found her charming in her own way, quietly strong, the glue that held Avalanche together. While they may have always openly acknowledged Cloud as their leader, when it boiled down to the nitty-gritty, everyone turned to Tifa for guidance and support. He downed the rest of his brandy in one gulp, savoring the fleeting burn at the back of his throat. Was he up for it or wasn't he? Tifa had just left her house thirty minutes ago, and if he was going to break in…now would be the time. Of course he'd known about her highly publicized divorce, her overdose, and through seedier sources her weeklong confinement to the hospital's psychiatric ward in Costa del Sol.

Old Turk habits die hard.

Vincent slunk from shadow to shadow in the early morning gloom of the homes in Old Town. Hers sat near the path, straggly weeds fighting their way through the still mostly dead soil in her barren yard. The back window was open as usual, and through it, he crept inside into the kitchen. Everything was bare of personal effects, save a partially reupholstered sofa, odd for a woman but as he'd expected from Tifa. He searched around the first floor and finding nothing decided upon searching what must've been her room on the second floor. A neatly made bed, an old wall mirror, and a file cabinet were the only things in her room. He swallowed his guilt and opened the first drawer. Perhaps what these files contained would be the only true remedy to rebuilding Tifa Lockheart. Vincent often felt in the recent weeks, that like Sephiroth, she'd been sent to him for him to care for, and the responsibility he felt for her superseded whatever guilt he felt for violating her privacy, the one possession she held onto like no other.

* * *

A/N: I felt it was time for a break in Tifa's narrative to explore some of the unexplored areas of the story from Vincent's perspective. As Tifa is an "unreliable narrator", I really wanted Vincent to explore some of Tifa's contradictions so far. The story will be wrapping up in about four or five more chapters, and I hope this has been an interesting read. Reviews are appreciated.


	10. A Good Bottle of Wine

Glimpses of Normalcy

* * *

_"Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us." _

_David Richo_

* * *

Even now, I found Sephiroth beautiful. Perhaps in a more cadaverous sort of way. All vestiges of the dark angel that weepy, romantic housewives threw on him in their deranged letters to the _Junon_ _Ladies' Journal_ just rang too cliché. If anything, I was bored with clichés. I was bored with angels, would-be gods, and people's heroes. I wanted to rank _him _with that list but never could. His face was all soft, almost womanly curves with full dark lashes that should have contrasted with the silvery waist-length hair, but he was a cohesive vision of engineered perfection. More animal than man, he loped with a certain grace. Just like a wolf. Predatory. It was sickening. I wanted to quash those furtive thoughts, those last embers of desire that welled up from a more craven place than my heart. I couldn't do anything but stare. Damn it. I wanted to see that immaculate body hunched over a toilet, drunkenly vomiting like one of my regulars at my bar. I wanted to see him tear through a rare steak with slit-eyed animal rapture. I wanted to know that he had to shit— that the glorious Sephiroth felt the same call to nature like us all. I wanted. I didn't dare finish that thought. The full rich bow of his lips. Those fine long and deft fingers. Damn it.

* * *

I dutifully trekked through the trails leading up to the reactor. A high pale moon hung in the bloody dawn sky, and despite the wind, all lay silent. It was unnerving how the mountains felt just before daybreak. Give me a birdsong, a howl… something. I felt stupid. What was I supposed to do or say? Vincent sent me off to save souls. Hell, I could hardly save myself. A walk that I knew took nearly two hours along narrow paths felt like ten minutes. The reactor loomed up and looked more rusted than usual. Before it, I felt mortal. Behind the threshold and in the main chamber, I felt small. There _he _lay resting in a frayed, threadbare sleeping bag. He eyed me blearily with a sleepy annoyance. I grunted and eased up to toe him with my boot.

"Vincent sent me here…to talk," my voice quivered then cracked. I snorted with derision for myself.

Mechanically, Sephiroth pushed back the sleeping bag and pulled himself into a sitting position. He motioned for me to do the same. Next to him of course. I sat and drank in his waking form. His hair was matted, and his eyes were ringed blue. I sniffed. He wasn't exactly mountain fresh either.

He half mumbled, half yawned, "So?"

"So," I echoed.

"We can't go on like this, Tifa."

My eyes widened, "Like what?"

"I'm tired," Sephiroth whispered.

"I don't understand," I shrugged.

We speak two different languages. I want to say this but don't. He wouldn't know what I meant, and we'd just lapse into another of our usual silences. I don't understand. I don't know what to do or say. I want to leave so desperately because he is becoming with every passing moment all the more a mere man in my eyes. This is not a plummet from grace.

"I am tired of skirting around you, them, Vincent. Everything," his last word rings out as a sonorous echo and hangs in the stale air of the reactor. He shuffled uncomfortably next to me as if his skin were too much to bear, the simple weight of living.  
"I want to hate you so badly," I hear myself weakly whimper, "I want to keep blaming you, but I can't." Whose words are these, and where did Tifa Lockheart go? I am dying for air but reach out for his hand. Those fine callused fingers consume my small glove.

His baritone devours my breath, "What happens now?"

We cannot live happily ever even if I somehow discover forgiveness along the way. The rules just are not written that way. You cannot commit genocide three times over and expect the world to turn the page. Yet…to prolong this moment, I am willing to say anything.

"I don't know, but you cannot keep living here."

In this place, at this moment I am drenched with my own sweat, and though, I have no mirror I can see myself clearly here with Sephiroth. I am Cat's worn down bear. Skin sagging from the bone, my hair clings to my flesh but still feels like wild straw. Thin and ill, my once full cheeks lay sallow with all the appeal of a sickly, sucked-in lemon. Let me tell you now that I did have my little stolen moments of vanity. While Cloud was obsessing over finally being able to play the hero, I reveled in being the smokey-eyed vixen. So much for yesteryear. I am my own photo negative.

"I can't keep living like this," Sephiroth voices my thoughts, and as I look towards him and really see him, he is a shrunken little boy. He mutters on, "I can't live with you. With anyone. Anywhere."

"Just forget it, Sephiroth," I sigh, "Just come to my place tonight. We'll eat a good steak, drink a good bottle of wine, and forget the world tonight." I cannot believe my own words, but I keep saying them. I mutter stupid, little soothing things, motherly nothings in the void of the reactor. I dream of a little cabin nestled away further in the heart of the mountains. I see Sephiroth there in his painfully romantic life of solitude, and I know I am already a fool for thinking these things. He knows it too. I cannot stop.

"What is it about you?" Sephiroth murmurs aloud to empty air.

I shrug and pull myself to my feet. I need to leave. I have been here a little too long, and the bearish bravado that I displayed earlier is starting to get to me. _I cannot do this again._

"Some days, Sephiroth," I whisper, "I feel like a mountain wolf. I might just spring up and leap away in the winter air of the mountainside."

I leave him there and stalk back down the path to my home. There is something unsettling about the feel of Old Town, and the world feels like its shrinking in on me. All the more damning, the image of that little cottage nestled among tall firs wells up in my mind. I dream of snow-capped peaks and rushing rivers thick with chunks of ice. Instead of going back to my cold and impersonal house and feeling its emptiness creep down and undo me, I walk to the new side of Nibelheim.

Alpine commercialism assaults the lay of the land. Everything is a manufactured copy of a copy of a copy. Even the pine and mountain flavored freshness of the air tastes artificial. I watch the quiet early risers among the tourists make their way through the streets. No one really lives here. Everyone is permanently on vacation, and I am just another tourist looking in on a forbidden world. I belong nowhere to no one. As I pace through the streets past bright souvenir shops and cheap diners that promise the best of Nibelheim's goodness, I keep thinking of Sephiroth. Then my thoughts wander to tonight's dinner, and I find myself in front of a grocery store.

Back in Costa del Sol, I used to enjoy the little domestic things like grocery shopping. I buffed my faucets and shined my windows until they were pristine crystal. I kept a little garden in front of my villa and loved the gritty feel of soil underneath my fingernails. I savored picking between fat, purple eggplants from the best of the bunch, and hell, I even looked forward to cleaning my stained toilet when I got in the house at the night. It was so relieving that I could chop vegetables up on a cutting board that I'd grown myself or read the latest bestseller on the porch at night with an expensive brandy. No one was shooting at me, and I wasn't risking my life every other moment. When did that stop being enough?

I push an empty cart between the aisles and look down one towards produce and down another at pampers. More than a steak, I want to chop wood and hunt. Sacrificing one life for another, I want to pounce away on these sticks for legs, and someday, I just might.

The store is fairly empty and no one even looks at me anymore. I am anonymous. I suppose I hardly look the part of the famous martial artist from the papers these days. In yesterday's issue, I was just a footnote. Today, no mention. I shuffle through the line, head low, and check myself out at the self-service register. Two thick, bloody rib-eye steaks, a marked down bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, two yellow onions, one carton of mushrooms, some nondescript vanilla ice-cream, and a prepackaged chocolate cake. I am a horrible baker, and maybe he has a sweet tooth.

With a bag full of perishables, I have no choice but to go back home. The steaks and mushrooms look so spare on the bare shelves in the refrigerator. The only other frigid neighbor is a half-used bottle of ketchup with crunchy layer of hardened residue on the lid. I toss it out and then sit quietly in my living room on my old lumpy sofa. I lean back in the cool gloom in my house and pray for a distraction. I suppose I know a bit how _he_ feels now. Time never really moves. Everything is static loneliness, an endless waiting for each day to end until you simply stop moving. I stopped living the moment I came here. I strain to listen for a faint tap at my back window to feel the ruffling breeze of my curtains because he's invaded my home once again. Nothing. I cannot tell you the moment he became another chair or picture frame in the background of my life. More furniture that makes up my world. He is something more and without him, I am simply spending time watching everything trickle away like sand.

A knock at the door, and I spring to my feet. Way to be eager, Tifa, I berate myself silently. I open the door and see Vincent. I shouldn't be too surprised. It is way too risky for Sephiroth to come down here during the day. Vincent eyes me wearily, and I step to the side and wave him in.

"I'll make us some tea. Make yourself at home," I mutter and scurry off to the kitchen.  
"That would be nice," he retorts distractedly.

A few minutes pass, and I return to my sitting room with clattering china and a cheap half-eaten package of cookies.

"Sorry for the fare. I thrive on pre-made, half-frozen everything. I haven't felt up to cooking much since I moved here," I wave over the paltry slim pickings in an attempt to play the role of the gracious, simpering hostess. That falls flat. Dinner parties and midmorning teas are just not my game.

"How are things?" Vincent asks. He is far too polite to interrogate me like he would do with anyone else. I know that he wants to know about the talk with Sephiroth.

I wonder how much I should really tell him. I have to say something. I blurt out, "I am having dinner with Sephiroth tonight."

"This is new," He quirks one wispy dark brow. I wonder why I haven't seen it before. Father and son mirror each other so well. If Sephiroth's hair were dark, he would be all the more Vincent's son. He says nothing as if he wants an explanation.

I've got nothing and grasp at straws, "It is something new. We talked for awhile, and I just invited him down. I can't keep being hostile to him. We will have to work something out eventually."

Vincent rewards with me one his rare, signature smiles. A faint crook of those lovely and strangely familiar lips. He dips a hard cookie square into the amber wells of my cheap cup and takes a bite once it is nearly mush. He appeared thoughtful for a moment staring down in the swishing dark brew of his teacup and then spoke, "I suppose this is all for the best."

"It is?" I murmur at his easy acceptance for whatever I share with Sephiroth. I wouldn't call him protective, but he is cautious and maybe rightfully so in matters that pertain to his son. He inhales sharply, and I can see that he is holding something back from me, "If you have something to say, Vincent, then say it. I can't handle you tiptoeing around me either." That came out far harsher than I intended, and I now became keenly aware of how the clattering china in my hand shook ever so slightly.

He lets out a long and decidedly frustrated sigh, "I of all people have no right to judge you here. As one of the women that I respect most, I want nothing but you restored to the way you were. Whole. Healthy. Happy. If this is the way to do it, then you have my blessings. Maybe this is evolution…or closure."

Color me stunned. I can feel the heat of my cheeks as I stare at his rising form. I can't let him leave me like this, "Vincent…I"

He shakes his head, "No. Don't say anything. You don't have to…I already know."

My front door creaks ajar, and as quietly as he came, Vincent is gone. I collect our cups and saucers and wash them idly in my cubbyhole of a kitchen. My sudsy, pruned fingertips work out of sync with my roving thoughts. The oppressive air in this house feels lighter, and the grayness of my life feels as if it has taken on an array of colors for which I have no words, but still I am dogged by the reverie of that alpine cabin as pretty as the inside of a snow globe. I see myself leant against snow covered firs even older than Nibelheim, and I am not alone. A confusing heat in my chest pushes me back into reality as I find myself before my stove. The downright predatory aroma of blood simmering away from steaks on the rusted stovetop assaults the air, and I can feel my heart racing as if I were on the hunt. I could just leap away in this moment, climb through my window, and run off into the horizon for that alpine retreat.

I place a palm against my bosom. This is so very, very wrong. Vincent can't be right. I can't feel this way about anyone, especially him. Especially him, my mind echoes again and again as if in prayer. Off in the distant backrooms of the house, a window opens. I know it's him. He stalks against the age-softened wood of my floorboards with a leopard's grace and stands beneath the archway between the den and kitchen.

"I am early," the low timbre of his voice seizes the room, and he still carries that otherworldly aura which I have come to despise lovingly. This morning, I saw a man, and now here looms the specter that may as well had risen up from beneath my floorboards. For me, Sephiroth is always half here and half somewhere else. He should have been dead, but I need him to be real. He has to be real…as he is _now_. I have to know, to touch. My hand is on his chest, and I am across the room halfway not really caring how I've gotten there. A distant thought from my brain assures that surely my feet have borne me here, but my soul doesn't know it yet.

"What are…?" I swallow his words with my lips. He tastes of the fire that I remember from those eight long years that have passed, and his finely haired skin smells of burning timber. Suddenly, his hands grasp at the small of my back, and through his shock, I feel him return my kiss with all of the intensity of a dying man. It isn't until smoke fills the air that we let go of each other, gasp for air, and return to ourselves. He is noticeably stiff, and I feel almost nauseous with the char of the meat in the small room.

"Well, so much for dinner," Sephiroth says between almost undetectable pants. Everything in the kitchen is smaller and dimmer save for the brightness of his wide, catlike eyes. I think that I surprised him, and I surprised myself as well.

"Wow," I stammer aloud, and I repeat myself more faintly, "…wow". I lie backwards against the sharp steel edge of my sink and listen to soft bubble and hiss of the stove. Come on. Say something. Anything. I toy with playfulness, but the timing is off and leaves my voice practically mechanic, "Well, I do have chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream." I lick my lips as I watch Sephiroth shuffle his feet across the room. This is awkward. Why is my heart sinking?

He suddenly looks up at me intently, deeply as if he is trying to see inside of me, "I'll take you up on the offer."

Dinner becomes dessert, and we're in my den on my old, patchy sofa with two cups of an incredibly bitter coffee and my confectionary purchases from the day. A lone light bulb hangs from the ceiling and illuminates the room with a flickering hesitance. The opposite of romantic candlelight, this feels like the buzzing lamp of a basement drug den. Only the exposed pipes and makeshift lab are missing. We haven't said much since _that _moment. Somehow, I feel we will not ever say much.

"Tifa, I am sorry," Sephiroth apologizes suddenly and unexpectedly between mouthfuls of cake. I glance over at his crumb-flecked visage and feel a small hurt well up in my chest. Surely while a little wet and imprecise, the kiss couldn't have been that bad. He shakes his head suddenly catching my eyes, "Not about that. About _before_."

Oh. That _before_. My memories seize me and thrust me into the Nibelheim of my memory, and just as quickly as they arose, they fade. His apology is a little more earnest this time, and I feel it wash over me as viscous and warm as melted caramel.

"I know," I reply with a dull fondness for him, "I think that I have always known. I just wasn't ready then. You know, to really forgive…" He cuts me off with the rich cocoa and vanilla bean of his lips, and I can feel the heat and urgency of his need for someone, anyone behind his kiss. He pulls away before this can progress into something that cannot be taken back.

"I don't want this…us to be like back then either."

My eyes widen. I don't have to ask him what he means or wants. I just know. Like Vincent said, this is new, incredibly new. The room shrinks and fades before my eyes, and the sweets lay abandoned on my rude coffee table like forgotten refuse. I feel the pitter patter of my heart as it leaps wildly from my chest. When did the last vestiges of my hate pass away? Last month? Last week? This morning in the reactor?

Here Sephiroth sat so very warm and so very near my body, and I am all the more aware his mortality as I drink in the hope etched onto his fine features. The alabaster paleness of his flesh, the soft, shapely rosiness of his lips, and the point of his nose have never been more appealing. I thought that I would have always gone for a more conventionally masculine man like Cloud — someone more overtly muscular and compact, but I have never wanted someone more than I could want Sephiroth _then _or now. The guilt that I didn't even know I felt wells up and passes as quickly. All of that is inconsequential when compared to this very second.

His larger hand captures my icy, sweat slick fingers and tugs me lightly to my feet. We glide up the stairs almost as if we were dancing to my bed. I tug one sock free from my foot with the other, and his plain tee lands somewhere in the room. We both end up entwined and as nude as the day we were born all the same, and an uncountable length of time passes before we both fall back on my frameless mattresses spent and breathing softly. A secondhand sheet halfway drapes his sinewy frame, and Sephiroth reminds me all the more of one of those soft, reclining male nudes from centuries old paintings. A certain boyhood naiveté hides beneath the darkness of his aura. I lie in the crook of his arm and savor his simple green maleness. This was unavoidable. Somehow, I always knew that we would go full circle and end up back at the start, but something is different. He is a little older and somewhat more gaunt, and I. I am…

"You're beautiful," he says aloud in hush more to the air than to me, "I always thought you were beautiful even _then_." My youth and the circumstances of our first meeting are left unsaid, but then he says something which astounds me, "I have spent the last few months wondering what drove me to you eight years ago. You were my last link to humanity, Ms. Lockheart." The slight formality feels silly now considering all that has happened between us.

I say nothing as the evenness of his breath lulls me to sleep. I only tighten my embrace and pull myself closer to his lithe form. It's the rain that wakes me at dawn. It falls as a soft, autumnal godsend for the last harvests off in the pastureland further from the damned crater of Old Town, and I am on my feet staring through the bathroom window and watching the mist rise from the red and gold of the mountains. I can almost feel the few broken deer herds as they thunder through the dying forests from my room.

My arms and legs are both sore, and in the mirror I can see the half-formed redness of bruises along the muscles of my stomach and hips. At the back of my mind, I expected to feel awful about this the next day, but I just feel oddly fulfilled. This isn't resignation. It's something else. This ramshackle home now feels too small for me, and the man, Sephiroth, my newfound love — he cannot continue staying in that awful place that holds so many terrible memories for us in the mountains.

He groans softly from my room, and I return. He looks so spare on the mattress in the middle of the floor. A single cheap lamp sat plugged in a half-broken socket on one corner of the room. I own so few things. What's to stop me from giving it all up? Sephiroth yawns and stretches, his bones creaking all the while. He pulls himself to sit before me cross-legged. His lips are pursed with his usual morning grumpiness, and I fondly caress the pale stubble of his cheek.

"I thought that I had been dreaming last night," he murmurs.

I laugh with far less restraint than I've felt over these last few years, "I promise you that last night was definitely not a dream." I cannot say where we will go from here, but these are newer, better days. I have finally found something, someone to hold onto and call mine in this world, and this time, I will not surrender it for wanderlust or dreams of glory.

* * *

A/N: It has been a couple years since I've come back to this story and to this fandom, and this was one of my more favored fanfictions. I just want to give this story the ending that I think it deserves. Thank you all kindly sticking with this story and for your reviews and favorites. The next chapter will be the epilogue, and as always, thank you all for reading!


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